Nail in the coffin for LJ
Okay so this thing has been out of style for about 2 years now, and given pretty much everyone has migrated to Facebook and/or has actually invested in their own blogs, LJ is pretty much useless. But now SixApart (the only company that actually knows what its doing in blogging) has sold off the expensive and clunky LJ product to Russian firm SUP. Of course Lj is trying to celebrate it by saying it has a new home. What you should know about SUP is that its major source of revenue is online advertising and its association with Livejournal (under licence since October 2006) has predominantly been to drive Russian interest in the act of blogging and then to use the platform to sell goods and services.

Of course, most of the users have been the main reason for LJ's demise, but this was always going to happen. SixApart deal primarily with mainstream bloggers, not the traditionally unruly (and remarkably change-resistant) mob of LJ users, so SixApart were struggling uphill to bring LJ in to the modern era of social networking. The current change in ownership is clearly an opportunity for SixApart to wash their hands of the obstreperous mass.

I'll still be here technically, but given it's been 72 weeks since my last post, I suggest you head over to my usual blog at joannejacobs.net if you want to stay in touch with the happenings in blogland.