Live Journal
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LiveJournal homepage
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Type of site
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Blog hosting |
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| Available in | 33 languages |
| Owner | SUP Media |
| Created by | Brad Fitzpatrick |
| Website |
Livejournal.com Livejournal.org |
| Alexa rank |
 242 (August 2016[update]) |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional (required to post) |
| Launched | April 15, 1999 |
| Current status | Online |
| Written in | Perl |
LiveJournal (Russian: Живой Журнал) is a Russian (originally American) social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal or diary.
LiveJournal was started on April 15, 1999 by American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities. In January 2005, blogging software company Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive, the company that operated LiveJournal, from Fitzpatrick.
Six Apart sold LiveJournal to Russian media company SUP Media in 2007; the service continued to operate out of the U.S. via a California-based subsidiary, LiveJournal, Inc., but began moving some operations to Russian offices in 2009. In December 2016, the service re-located its servers to Russia, and in April 2017, LiveJournal changed its terms of service to conform to Russian law. A wide variety of political pundits also use the service for political commentary, particularly in Russia, where it partners with the online newspaper Gazeta.ru. As with many other social networks, a wide variety of public figures use the network.
The unit of social networking on LiveJournal is quaternary (with four possible states of connection between one user and another). Two users can have no relationship, they can list each other as friends mutually, or either can "friend" the other without reciprocation. On LiveJournal, "friend" is also used as a verb to describe listing someone as a friend.
The term "friend" on LiveJournal is mostly a technical term; however, because the term "friend" is emotionally loaded for many people, there have been discussions in such LiveJournal communities as lj_dev and lj_biz, as well as suggestions about whether the term should be used in this way.
A user's list of friends (friends list, often shortened to flist) will often include several communities and RSS feeds in addition to individual users. Generally, "friending" allows the friends of a user to read protected entries and causes the friends' entries to appear on the user's "friends page." Friends can also be grouped together in "friends groups," allowing for more complex behavior.
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Wikipedia