Oh, feh.

[heidi]

You may have already seen this, but from Valleywag at Gawker:

[LiveJournal's] product managers and engineers were laid off, leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers — which speaks to a website to be left on life support. Matt Berardo, a Yahoo executive hired on last summer, is also believed to be gone.

CNET sounds slightly less panicky. But better to be safe than sorry! I am not going anywhere, but I am in various other places in case LJ does go somewhere.

I am backed up on InsaneJournal at 8heidi8 and I have an account that I really should move everything over to on JournalFen at heidi - yes, this means that I am not 'heidi8' on other blog-sites.

I'm also on facebook if you know my real name, and on Twitter at travelingheidi.

Why do I feel like the "sort your flist by date" thing last month was the last hurrah of something wonderful from LJ?

I have been here for seven years, as of this month. I don't have a seven year itch. I don't want LJ to go away. I can't recreate this community, not anywhere else.

About six weeks ago when there was a hacking concern, I asked about ways to back up my LJ, and got some recommendations here. I ended up using both LJArchive and LJBook, but I haven't gone through and re-uploaded my LJ posts anywhere else. For me, the comments and polls are as important as the content of my own posts, though, and that's not even including all the icons and photos I've stored here on LJ over the last seven years.

There has to be a way to at least keep LJ online as a hosting location because right now, I am terrified that we are going to lose that.

And that would be awful.

Comments

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I just followed you on twitter. :)

And I don't know. I don't think we have anything to worry about over night. I think it's mostly a reaction to the economy, not to LJ and it's user base itself. My building has lost about 800 people in the last year to lay offs and we're still publishing text books. Things go on.

[dancinbutterfly.livejournal.com]

*hugs you* hi fellow voice of calm and reason. Its nice to see I'm not alone.*hugs more*

[momebie.livejournal.com]

*smoosh* My flist has been worried over it, albeit not as much as when I was in the HP fandom more heavily. I think a deep breath is what we need right now though. Anything is possible, yes, but it's not personal.

[dancinbutterfly.livejournal.com]

I dont think them shutting off the server is even LIKELY. I think improvements will vanish but lord, people, I dont think the site is going anywhere.

[dancinbutterfly.livejournal.com]

I doubt they're going to turn off the servers and i wish everyone would just calm the fuck down. Look, it sucks they fired all these people and probably, its some russian jumping ship. But as I said, I dont fucking think that they're going to turn it off I REALLY dont. I think there will be no new anything but lord. I dont think that means they're going to turn it off either. Not without warning.

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

I'd be pissed off because it would make me feel stupid for having a permanent account.

[effervescent.livejournal.com]

Me too. -sighs- People are all 'oh, we can just back up and go elsewhere!' But the thing is... There's a scattering that would happen. You can already see it when people talk about where they would go. There's Inksome, Journalfen, Insanejournal, Dreamwidth... Four, and that's just off the top of my head.

People all have their grievances with LJ, but somehow we're all grouped together, here - but the factions are strong enough that everyone wants to go in nine different directions if we split up.

Eh. Will see, I guess. But of all things that have happened, this is the one that has me the most worried. It makes me think they're planning on re-selling, or that the site will just be left on hold in the meantime. How long will the money from the permanent account sale keep them going?

[misscake]

According to a lot of the links here, Valley Wag's numbers are a bit off. But not by much.

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

I would really like to see a member-led buyout. That's my hope.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I'm in! Anyone organizing one yet?

I'd love to see LJ become a nonprofit-hosted thing, actually...

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

I think it bears waiting to see what the official word from SUP is, but I've been thinking that if they are willing to sell at a loss and recoup some of their losses as opposed to shutting the whole thing down and losing everything, it would be possible to raise ten million or so bucks between members. I'm sticking that out there as a reasonable number without knowing the cost of running the site. But yeah, LJ was run on volunteerism for so many years, there would be very few paid positions required and little overhead.

Oh, and no word on an actual attempt to organize. I just mentioned the thought on furiosity's LJ.

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it's being mocked in sf_drama if that dampens your fire a bit.

IDK I like LJ but use it mostly for comms, so I'm unlikely to continue with this kind of format if it goes under.

[chu-totoro.livejournal.com]

There is a current buyout comm located at ljuser_buyout - very small at the moment, just over a hundred members, but hoping to gain more.

I happened upon this page while journal browsing (I'm sorry, you're fairly famous on Fanhistory Wiki and Bad Penny ;;;) and just thought I'd drop the note.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

My guess is LJ may go to an all pay site and jsut suspend the free services, which would suck for RPG's and such and communities.

Or more adds.

Honestly, if I had to choose between no LJ and adds I'd take adds because IJ and JF just are not the same for some reason.

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

I think that paid-only would be okay as long as paid members could make multiple journals on their paid account.

[sabaceanbabe.livejournal.com]

synecdochic has an interesting post about a possible LJ alternative that she's working on and there are a couple of posts I've read from people who actually know what's going on that are far less panic-inducing than Valley Weg. I'll see if I can find you some links.

And I'm sabaceanbabe on Journel Fen. I'm just sayin'...

ETA: Here's the main link I was thinking of.

[zeldaophelia.livejournal.com]

At this point, I'm not really expecting LJ to disappear. Especially with the support volunteers, things will keep going.

I think it's more likely, with most of the layoffs being developers, that the advancements and improvements we've been promised won't materialize (a la carte userpics, etc).

That said, I still am going to back up my LJ. And see if I can figure out a way to move all my posts to IJ without having to repost each one separately.

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

Oh, here!

CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10132684-36.html

It sounds more like this is layoffs to cut costs and move different Russian departments to US-only and US departments to Russia-only for now.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Grrrrr.

On the upside, I'm glad I didn't buy a permanent account.

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

I don't think we need to worry right now. Lots of companies are downsizing to try and weather the economic storm. It's going to be a while before we know if it helped and even longer before companies start going under.

Yes, this link can be reposted, if you think it will help at all

[phoenixsong]

http://ecwoodburn.livejournal.com/856676.html

[loonyemi.livejournal.com]

Yeah I dunno. I see a market-sensitive company hosting a round of layoffs during a severe economic downturn, not a doomsday scenario. The employees listed as "slashed" all seemed to be recent hires, and I'd wager they laid off more US employees than Russian ones.

Will this mean that we'll likely have fewer new glittery cookies from the development team until their numbers have risen? Probably. But is the sky falling? Unlikely. Let's not run around like little chickens. :P

[storm-maven.livejournal.com]

I need to get my lazy butt upp and back up mine. Not so much as putting the posts on another sit, but just to keep them for myself. I'm not really pressed about the posts, but they would be nice to have. Just for shits and giggles from time to time.