LiveJournal

LiveJournal (often referred to by its users as lj, capitalised or not) is the name of a website where Internet users can keep a journal or diary, as well as the name of the server software that was designed to run it. It is one of many sites that come under the term blog, or weblog. The software running the site is open source. What distinguishes LiveJournal from other blog sites is the "Friends page", a list of the most recent posts from people a user has added to their "Friends list" -- this turns LiveJournal into a community of interconnected weblogs.

Like most weblogs, people can comment on each others' journals and create a message board-style thread of comments -- each comment can be replied to individually, starting a new thread from every one. All users, including non-paying users, can set various options for comments: they can instruct the software to only accept comments from those on their Friends list or block anonymous comments (meaning only LiveJournal users can comment on their posts), or not allow commenting at all. In addition, LiveJournal acts as host to group discussion boards, or "communities," encompassing a myriad of subjects. (For example, there is a community dealing specifically with Wikipedia.) A community is created as a regular journal account, and can then be converted into a community account.

LiveJournal was started by Brad Fitzpatrick as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities. As of May 2003, over one million accounts had been created, of which nearly 400,000 had been updated at some point in the last month [1]. Between them, these users make about 180,000 individual posts per day. Of those users who provided their date of birth, the vast majority are in the 15-22 age group. Of those who specified their gender, almost two thirds are female. LiveJournal is most popular in English-speaking countries (although there is a language selection feature), and the United States has the most LiveJournal users by far. Following are rounded figures from May 2003:

United States - 640,000
Canada - 43,000
United Kingdom - 32,000
Australia - 17,000

LiveJournal relies heavily on user contributions and volunteer efforts. The LiveJournal Support area is run almost entirely by unpaid volunteers. Similarly, the website is translated into other languages by volunteers. Although programming is mainly done by employees and the original creator himself, user contributions in this area are also reviewed and considered.

Because LiveJournal is an open source project, many other communities have been designed using the LiveJournal software. However, these, apart from DeadJournal, tend to be unstable and short-lived. These include, but are not limited to:

LiveJournal is owned by Danga Interactive, which is in turn owned by Fitzpatrick.

Table of contents

1 In the past

1.1 Invite codes
1.2 LiveJournal timeline

2 See also
3 External links

In the past

Invite codes

From September 2, 2001 until December 12, 2003, because the number of users was increasing faster than the server architecture could handle, the growth of LiveJournal was put under control by an "invite code" system. New users needed to either obtain such an invite code from an existing user, or buy a paid account (which reverts to a free account at the expiration of the period of time paid for). The invite code system also had the side effect of helping prevent abuse, by deterring people from creating many throw-away accounts. The invite code system was lifted after a number of major improvements to the overall site architecture.

The removal of the invite code system has met with mixed feelings and a surprisingly high amount of opposition. A number of users felt that the invite code system gave LiveJournal a touch of elitism, or a closed-community feel. Others, including LiveJournal's management, pointed out that when first introduced, the invite code system was intended to be temporary.

On December 17, 2003, LiveJournal announced that they will allow users with unused invite codes left to exchange them for LiveJournal coupons, which in turn could be used to turn a Free Account into a Paid Account without actually paying [1].

LiveJournal timeline

March 18 1999 -- LiveJournal starts (first entry ever: [1]; first version of the server code: [1])
November 17 1999 -- Creation of the news journal [1]
April 1 2000 -- Message boards (comments on entries) [1]
May 21 2000 -- Subject lines for entries
August 2 2000 -- Interests [1]
August 3 2000 -- First version of the Directory Search in beta test [1]
August 15 2000 -- First version of the Support board (earliest surviving support request: [1])
August 22 2000 -- Topic directory [1] (now defunct)
August 25 2000 -- Text messaging [1]
September 13 2000 -- First paid-account benefits [1]
November 14 2000 -- LJ user visions releases first version of his Windows client (now the most popular) [1]
December 1 2000 -- Creation of the changelog journal [1]
December 16 2000 -- Communities [1]
January 12 2001 -- Introduction of the dystopia site scheme [1]
March 18 2001 -- User polls [1]
March 24 2001 -- LiveJournal server code goes open-source [1]
May 16 2001 -- First support privilege: supporthelp [1]
September 2 2001 -- Invite codes are introduced [1]
November 4 2001 -- avva becomes first full-time employee [1]
January 5 2002 -- First purging run (freeing deleted usernames) [1]
February 2 2002 -- Database clustering [1]
April 1 2002 -- New support category: Communities [1]
April 14 2002 -- UTF-8 [1]
May 3 2002 -- Web interface starts getting translated into other languages [1]
July 3 2002 -- Zilla (bug and project tracking database) created (first entry: [1])
July 8 2002 -- RSS syndication [1]
August 22 2002 -- Support introduces interim privileges [1]
November 26 2002 -- Support category Customization closed [1]
December 29 2002 -- New support category: Syndication [1]
January 16 2003 -- Style System 2 (S2) enters beta-test [1]
March 18 2003 -- Introduction of the xcolibur site scheme [1]
April 11 2003 -- One million accounts reached [1] [1]
October 24 2003 -- Post by e-mail [1]
October 29 2003 -- New support category: Style systems [1]
November 12 2003 -- Post by phone [1]
December 12 2003 -- Invite codes are removed [1]
December 17, 2003 -- Unused Invite Codes can be used to obtain LiveJournal coupons until December 31 [1]

Important milestones missing from this list (please add with links as appropriate):

Friends list, security settings
Friends view
User pictures

External links

LiveJournal.com
"Journals might be gaining ground", The Mercury News
Changes in Support - like the timeline above, but specific to the Support area and far more detailed.