[BRIEF NOTE] On Livejournal's future

[rfmcdonald]

I'm indebted to springheel_jack for linking to the Global Voices discussion on the future of LiveJournal. The recent DDoS attacks have made some people question the viability of this blogging platform, very popular in the Russophone world.

Incidentally, the attack was condemned by Medvedev (blog_medvedev).

Russia's tech-savvy President Dmitry Medvedev took to his blog on Thursday to condemn a massive denial of service attack on the country's hugely popular blogging site LiveJournal.

The site's new Russian owners SUP said the three-day attack was the worst in the service's history and was by the end targeting the entire service rather than specific blogs.

In a LiveJournal comment, Medvedev called the attack "outrageous and illegal".

"What happened must be investigated by the administration of LiveJournal administration and law enforcement agencies," Medvedev said.

The problem started with attacks on Alexei Navalny, who has used his blog to talk about corruption in the government and the ruling United Russia party, said an expert at the Kaspersky Lab Internet security company.

Created in 1999 by a US college student, LiveJournal became immensely popular in Russia not just as a blogging tool but a platform for creative and political discussion.

Medvedev, who has promoted innovation as a tool of economic growth, has a LiveJournal blog as well as his own Twitter account, which he updates regularly.

navalny was identified as a target in the discussions, with the Russian government apparently being frequently identified as the attacker. (But if Medvedev condemned the attack, is this incorrect? Or is this the work of a section of the government?) dolboeb is even quoted as suggesting that the attacker is trying to wreck the Livejournal community.

The article does not even list one actual comparison of the functions of LJ versus those of the other platforms where people are allegedly running. In reality, the main result of the exodus of Russian-speaking bloggers from LiveJournal will be the lose of contact with readers for whom this platform is standard. And in that case, if the exodus of interesting bloggers from LJ actually begins, it will mean for RuNet the lose of an important independent media-platform, which in this coming election year, obviously scares the filthy technologies used by the Power Vertical.

If anyone reading this can offer more insights, please, share them in the comments.

What does this mean for me, Anglophone user of LiveJournal safely embedded in Canada? I have everything saved thanks to ljArchive, so that's not the problem. The question of setting up a mirror site, or even shifting entirely, is something I've not yet considered in depth. (I've not even started on website planning; somewhat separate issue that, I suppose). The biggest discentive to quitting LiveJournal is that I really like the community. For an early-generation social networking system, it's pretty nice, and thanks to a certain amount of bias my real-life social networks are deeply embedded in the platform. Argh.