When was livejournal created

Fitzpatrick transformed a journaling application he created and was using for himself into a website others could use as well. LiveJournal consists of a journal for each user, which can be created using various privacy levels.

Users can join group journals, called communities. Features such as user pictures that can be changed for each entry make the journal more customizable. In the early to mids, LiveJournal was a very popular blogging platform with young people. However, tension between the managers and the user-base was frequent. In , LiveJournal suspended and purged more than accounts for suspected negative content with no warning or explanation. Because suspended accounts showed up with user names typographically struck through, the event was known as the Strikethrough.

Despite this setback, many continued to use the website, particularly internationally. LiveJournal was bought by a Russian company in , but remained based in the United States and subject to American laws over the following decade. As of November [update] , 39,, accounts exist on LiveJournal, with 1,, listed as "active in some way.

LiveJournal is most popular in English-speaking countries although there is a language selection feature , and the United States has by far the most LiveJournal users among users who choose to list a location. There is also a sizable Russian contingent.

In April , the Oh No They Didn't community was moved to its own database cluster to improve site performance for all users, due to its size and the amount of traffic it was receiving. Frank the Goat is LiveJournal's mascot. During the early years of the site, Frank was treated like an actual living being by much of the LiveJournal userbase, and his brief "biography" as well as his "journal" reflect this.

As of July the community has roughly 8, members, and is watched by more than 7, LiveJournal users. Beginning at the end of January , LiveJournal's weekly news posts included references to Frank's life, [ 50 ] becoming works of short fiction at the end of February. From September 2, , until December 12, , the growth of LiveJournal was checked by an "invite code" system.

This curbing of membership was necessitated by a rate of growth faster than the server architecture could handle. New users were required to either obtain an invite code from an existing user or buy a paid account which reverted to a free account at the expiration of the period of time paid for. The invite code system serendipitously reduced abuse on the site by deterring people from creating multiple throw-away accounts. The invite code system was lifted after a number of major improvements to the overall site architecture.

Elimination of the invite code system was met with mixed feelings and some opposition. LiveJournal's management pointed out that the invite code system was always intended to be temporary. The dual usage of "friend" as those whose journals one reads, and those one trusts to read one's own journal, has been criticized for being at odds with everyday use of the term.

The individual users on a user's friends list may contain a mixture of people met through real world friendships, online friendships and general interests, as well as courtesy friendships where a user has " friended " someone who friended them. A friends list may represent something entirely unrelated to social relationships, such as a reading list, a collection or a puzzle. The difference between online and real-world friendships is sometimes a source of conflict, hurt feelings, and other misunderstandings.

LiveJournal friendships are not necessarily mutual; any user can befriend or "defriend" any other user at any time. The Dreamwidth code fork of LiveJournal has split the 'friend' concept into its two component pieces of subscription and access. As LiveJournal has grown, it has had to deal with issues involving the content it hosts. Like most web logging hosts, it has adopted a basic Terms of Service. LiveJournal created an Abuse Prevention Team and processes to handle claims about violations of the Terms of Service, violations of copyright, violations of the law , and other issues.

There is an ability for a user to report an entry as "spam", and it is a user's responsibility to separate spamming and bot activity from actual violations while reporting. If the Abuse Prevention Team determines that a violation has occurred, the user will be either required to remove the infringing material as in the case of copyright violations ; [ 56 ] the journal will be suspended until such time as the material can be removed e.

When a journal is suspended, it effectively removes from sight everything the user has written on LiveJournal, including comments in other people's journals; however, the user is able to download the material while suspended. Those suspended users who have paid for LiveJournal's service do not have payments refunded.

A small controversy arose in November when a policy document used by the Abuse Prevention Team was leaked to a group of its critics before it was due to be released.

The policy document has since been officially released. Another controversy arose when users complained after an unknown number of users were asked to remove default user pictures containing images of breast feeding that were considered inappropriate as they contained a view of nipples or areolae. LiveJournal responded by changing the FAQ on appropriate content for default user pictures. The current FAQ says that nudity is not appropriate in default user pictures; the original FAQ said that graphic sexual content was not appropriate.

Breastfeeding pictures were not restricted by the original FAQ, and the current FAQ reflects the fact that they are only restricted from use as a default user picture.

In January the site had to make emergency changes to the way the site hosts user accounts due to a web browser -side security vulnerability. The hacker group responsible was later identified as "Bantown". Approximately , accounts were at risk. In April , LiveJournal announced [ 63 ] it was introducing a new user type that gave free users some of the features available to paid members in exchange for ad sponsorship. This announcement was met with a whirlwind of controversy.

Another ad-related controversy occurred in June , when ads for Kpremium began installing malware and triggering pop-up ads on Australian and Western European users' computers, [ 65 ] against the LiveJournal ad guidelines.

In March , LiveJournal discontinued the ability for new users to select the "basic" level of journal, which allowed for a minimal set of features with no advertising at no cost. However, the resumed basic service level is no longer ad-free: advertisements are displayed when readers who are not logged in to livejournal view postings on a basic account.

Advertisement in LiveJournal is based on the user's preferable categories, gender, age, location, interests, or a small portion of public page contents. Ads are targeted according to information about the author, the viewer, and LiveJournal's ad preferences as a whole.

User can choose the preferences in his settings [ 68 ] among five or more categories of advertising. In May , LiveJournal suspended approximately accounts and communities, causing what news. According to Six Apart chairman and chief executive Barak Berkowitz, "We did a review of our policies related to how we review those sites, those journals, and came up with the fact that we actually did have a number of journals up that we didn't think met our policies and didn't think they were appropriate to have up".

In particular, he noted that Livejournal's normal practice of reviewing suspensions and notifying suspended account holders had not been followed:. Most of the backlash was from fan fiction writers whose communities and personal journals were among those suspended, seemingly because they listed interests such as "incest" or "non-con" short for non-consensual.

Beyond merely fan communities, many were initially upset that communities entirely unrelated to anything but the discussion, sometimes therapeutic and other times literary, of rape or child molestation were among those suspended. On May 31, , Berkowitz released a statement to the LiveJournal news community [ 77 ] announcing that Six Apart was currently in the process of unsuspending about half of suspended journals.

The journals being reinstated fell into fandom or fiction categories or were journals that were suspended for problems related only to the contents of their profiles. In an earlier interview with news. SUP announced two other members would be appointed from the LiveJournal userbase, one Russian and one English speaking. The developer who wrote the poll software running the election called the ballot stuffing plausible.

LiveJournal has been the victim of several DDoS attacks in The first attack on March 30 took down the site for several hours. A second attack continued through April 4 and 5, causing service disruption for some users. Of the attacks, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev commented in April that "what has occurred should be examined by LiveJournal's administration and law enforcement agencies.

On Russia's election day in December, , LiveJournal saw another attack. Brad Fitzpatrick transformed a database-driven method he'd been using to update his own journal since into a Web-based application that his friends could also use.

LiveJournal was an immediate success and soon became a bigger website than a single person could easily handle. LiveJournal is an online journal service with an emphasis on user interaction. A basic, fully-functional account is free , while account with Professional package of service receive access to premium features. Why not create an account today? Throughout LiveJournal's history, ordinary users have worked together on various projects to support the greater LiveJournal community.

LiveJournal provides a number of ways for you to contribute your skills and talents. LiveJournal staff and volunteers use many official journals and communities to: improve the site and help users announce important events, features, and site changes improve the site's documentation and text Some of these communities have open membership so anyone can join and post entries.