The history of Cyrillic LJ: how Russian management crushed the rise of Russian-language blogging
Winter, apparently, has definitely come: in 2019, George R.R. Martin left LJ, reminding someone, and shocking someone, because George R.R. Martin was still in LJ - and LJ is still alive. But no, it seemed. The current state of Livejournal cannot be called living, but you can wait a long time to complete the entropy process - no one likes to wait on the Internet. So the Americans took the opportunity to publish the epitaph " How LiveJournal became the discoverer of blogs, and then lost them ."
Reading that makes me feel funny — even when I used LJ, it was extremely rare to recall the existence of the English-language segment — we were so divided that we could, with equal success, live on different sites. For 13 years, I wandered into the American half a few times, each time more and more surprised that there was someone else alive.
And despite the isolation of the community from each other, LJ, in the end, managed to lose both (he broke one, lost the other). But without the history of the Russian-language segment, this will be half the sad story of two cities. I'll tell her the way I saw her.
The fate of the Russian LJ is different from the American half of the story in everything, except that both segments of the LJ have a bad ending.
The English-speaking segment was a peaceful blogging platform, satisfying rather the everyday needs of the mass user in a prosperous consumer society, the main of which, apparently, was curiosity, judging by the topic of the largest English-speaking community Oh No They Didn't!
In Russia, the main driver of LJ growth was pain.
The heyday of the Russian segment of the mid-second half of the zero kept on a politicized core. You can remember various completely apolitical communities and authors, but no other party was connected in such a big ball.
And the politicized core was huge and bustling, because the most active authors — columnists, publicists, simple journalists and ordinary active-writing users who wanted to catch up with them — were mixed up in it, more or less divided into two ideological camps.
Actually, this unity, the struggle of opposites, the "guardians" against the "liberals" was the core of LJ, the most powerful source of gravity in the media space. In general, the most valuable resource for a business.
In August 2006, the rights to develop the Russian-language segment were bought by SUP Fabrik , co-owned by billionaire Alexander Mamut.
As it turned out, I also signed up for LiveJournal in August 2006, but got used to it more or less a bit later, starting to get involved in the life of the community only after 2-3 months later. Therefore, I missed the introduction of bloggers to the new administration - but judging by the fact that the word "SUP" has already become abusive - it was enchanting.
The next year of LJ’s life was probably the most vivid: the political atmosphere in the country worsened, debates intensified in LJ, and the show “opinion leaders of all LJ versus SUP” was added to the dynamics of “guards” and “liberals”.
Apparently, the SUP company did not pay much attention to such trifles as the blogging of some bloggers there; whose site is the main one. At the very least, I can do nothing other than a complete lack of respect for users and an understanding of the significance of such a trifle as a team for a collective blogging service, the fact that just a year later the SUP company examined its sites, found them in good condition and came to the conclusion that redeeming LJ entirely will be a good business decision.
So, at the end of 2007, Six Apart, founded by Brad Fitzpatrick, was completely bought out by the Russians for surprisingly modest, from today's point of view, $ 30 million.
This is not very good when a resource whose life-giving energy rests on an eternal conflict between a pro-government party and the opposition, endlessly generating content that attracts the main audience, suddenly finds itself in the pocket of one pro-government billionaire. Especially given the already drowned reputation of his administration at this point.
However, this quickly passed - and after six months, there were two billionaires: Alisher Usmanov joined Mamut as the new co-owner of "SUP".
Among the "liberal" part of the core of the audience, apocalyptic moods grew. There was a feeling that we had all been sold all at once, like serfs, and now we are the peasant theater of the master, who can now at any moment order an unwanted serf to shut up his mouth with his fingernail.
However, in hindsight it seems to me that the search for political motives in the purchase of MJ and Usmanov LJ was exaggerated. What looked like a seizure of a stronghold of freedom of speech could very well be an exclusively business move.
In the end, it was already the time of the “Medvedev Thaw” of 2008-2012 - the last delay of the Runet before all fears came true. But then it was still possible to exhale. Medvedev met with Deniskin (the forecast about Habr’s exit to a new level came true just the opposite: Medvedev was soon lowered).
Most likely, neither Usmanov nor Mamut had a clue how online communities are managed, especially when it comes to the loudest and most capricious Runet community - and it does not seem that they even reached the first step: to understand that they are dealing with people.
I suppose, however, that the horror that seemed to me then with the serf theaters was also not about that - judging by the way the comrade billionaires treated LJ, they perceived the audience as cattle - and not in a bad sense, but in the literal sense: cattle, which pasture weeds grass - the main thing is to count on the heads - is there a litter, or a loss?
The years of SUP Media financial experiments began, which had already turned into a media holding by that time, together with LJ and apart from the rest of their projects. Effective managers constantly gathered and thought about who to milk, whom to cut, how to brood and milk yield, looked into their ears, looked at their teeth, pulled their udders - in general, they tried to think of something so that this stubborn herd would begin to pay for itself.
I must pay tribute to the “SUP”: they are all the same persistent. Because no one really wanted to leave - the "liberals" did not at all withdraw from the camp and did not fly away together.
Bloggers, especially the demographic group, which at that time constituted the political core of the LiveJournal, can indeed be a stubborn herd, an extremely inert mass, which is incredibly difficult to move somewhere. But the energetic leadership of SUP Media succeeded.
Once again, Silicon Valley came to the rescue: at the beginning of the 2000s, there was Livejournal, at the end the time came for Facebook, which was still actively growing, very young and attracting a “liberal camp” a) neutral American origin and administration; b) the fresh spirit of involvement in the global community.
Moreover, as the platform for publishing Facebook was and remains absolutely terrible - none of the actively writing users who migrated to Facebook from LiveJournal did not migrate silently, without altering aloud some period of acclimatization. Including me; Yes, LJ opportunities, with all its disadvantages, were not enough.
But this is also a hello to his SUP management: to lose people for whom the walls of texts are both passion and a source of income, often, and even manage to do it with special shame - losing them to the very same Facebook, which was as if specially repulsive for writing people is so physically uncomfortable that people get used to it with loud moans. Columnists, journalists, and just graphomaniacs got used to flourishing on Facebook, Zuckerberg's bonfire was what the light is (to this day is fair) - but no one thought to return to LiveJournal.
The split core, the LJ core, has cooled and died - what else could happen to it if the remaining half was, in fact, a single camp? Moreover, really internally more connected than the "liberal" party - the leaders of the "guards" worked either in the already quite consolidated pro-Kremlin media, or in political technology firms - they had nowhere to physically crack.
In this sense, the much more atomized “liberal” party turned out to be more capable of maintaining the light - if they were alone without a single “guard” nearby, the “liberals” would immediately split into two camps - all the more so in the absence of a common enemy it became clear that “Liberals” actually consist, for the most part, of liberals and leftists — good old enemies, democrats against the communists.
The “guards” taunted these eternal internal graters in the “liberal camp” - but the fate of LJ after the outcome of the “liberals” gave rise to a dilemma: worse - the constant willingness to quarrel, which, in fact, preserves the light of the community - or disciplined solidarity, which, remaining without a beloved enemy, instantly turned into stone? I will leave the question open.
Not the outcome of the "liberals" killed LJ - the destruction of the bright core of the audience killed LJ. This core was the largest political space of Runet, its Forum in the ancient Roman sense, at which people who were “segmented and segregated by their media, but after work they ended up at the Forum — and no one wrote little hands tired, drawing to themselves the audience of all the other media in which they worked at once. And the administration managed to squeeze out one of the two groups forming this core of the group.
The core of LiveJournal has gone out.
Since the history of the Russian LJ segment from the very beginning was so closely connected with the political history of Russia itself, I would have drawn a conditional border, a point of no return for the former, live LJ in 2012. The political core by this time had already reliably and irrevocably split, dispersing along platforms.
However, left without a political community, LJ still retained for some time the last political group - followers of Alexei Navalny.
SUP, it turns out, pecked its existence in 2013. Was dispersed by pissing rags? No, combined with Rambler and Poster. Poor "Poster".
In 2014, all this economy renamed Rambler & Co . I want to believe - realizing the optionality of perpetuating the glorious name of SUP for centuries? However, judging by the smoothness of the process of dissolution of "SUP" in the bowels of Rambler & Co - they are still somewhere inside. Well, fortunately, Rambler can manage projects and teach them ... oh wait.
It seems that there is no alternative to it - LJ does not have any topic of similar scale to replace politics, and it cannot be - politics is one of the most addictive and widespread topics in public space.
Previously, the political core attracted a significant part of the audience, and the first association with LJ was “politics”. Now is the first association with LJ - .. "jeans"?
Instead of large topics uniting user clusters, there are more likely clientele of popular bloggers. But this is not a community.
One of the things that distinguishes the community from site visitors is the existence of a temporary dimension as a significant factor. Community is not only a reach, but also a process. And this is exactly what SUP destroyed in Learn.
To answer this question, I had to write an entire article: the feeling that LJ died many years ago, nevertheless, fought hard with their shameful, but, nevertheless, ongoing existence.
But now I have found an explanation. I will not speak for everyone, but when I say that LJ has died - I mean the community. And not only the notorious political core - while it was in the center, several smaller clusters were grouped around it - for example, ru_auto and related thematic communities. Without a kernel, they all end up too far from each other - just a bunch of small communities on random topics with falling chances of crossing the audience.
Actually, as LJ SUP saw it, he did it like that: killing, in the end, the community, but preserving the site with traffic. Now these people are somewhere inside the "Rambler", who himself is still the zinger.
But to keep LJ as one site without a center will be difficult, if at all possible - entropy will continue to grow until atomic bonds between the smaller communities break completely. This can probably be considered death. Or the completion of the decomposition of a corpse.
Reading that makes me feel funny — even when I used LJ, it was extremely rare to recall the existence of the English-language segment — we were so divided that we could, with equal success, live on different sites. For 13 years, I wandered into the American half a few times, each time more and more surprised that there was someone else alive.
And despite the isolation of the community from each other, LJ, in the end, managed to lose both (he broke one, lost the other). But without the history of the Russian-language segment, this will be half the sad story of two cities. I'll tell her the way I saw her.
The fate of the Russian LJ is different from the American half of the story in everything, except that both segments of the LJ have a bad ending.
The English-speaking segment was a peaceful blogging platform, satisfying rather the everyday needs of the mass user in a prosperous consumer society, the main of which, apparently, was curiosity, judging by the topic of the largest English-speaking community Oh No They Didn't!
In Russia, the main driver of LJ growth was pain.
The first term of Vladimir Putin’s presidency began with a rapid attack on politically independent federal television channels: in 2000, Boris Berezovsky was unable to refuse the offer to sell his 49% stake in ORT , and in April 2001 the famous “NTV rout” took place, with control over which As a result, Vladimir Gusinsky said goodbye. In the Russian-speaking public space, in which many journalistic voices managed to get stronger over the 1990s, freezing began - and the space for speaking on the federal air began to shrink sharply.The LiveJournal, a completely new thing then, a blogging platform completely free then of the pressure of both dictatorships and the corporations of the Internet, a single global communication space, could not be more helpful. Pioneers of the Runet began to get acquainted with LJ back in the 90s, but the rise of its popularity in 2001-2004 became, it seems, a direct consequence of the actions of the Kremlin.
The heyday of the Russian segment of the mid-second half of the zero kept on a politicized core. You can remember various completely apolitical communities and authors, but no other party was connected in such a big ball.
And the politicized core was huge and bustling, because the most active authors — columnists, publicists, simple journalists and ordinary active-writing users who wanted to catch up with them — were mixed up in it, more or less divided into two ideological camps.
Actually, this unity, the struggle of opposites, the "guardians" against the "liberals" was the core of LJ, the most powerful source of gravity in the media space. In general, the most valuable resource for a business.
Problems of Russian LJ began with the beginning of the Russification of his administration
In August 2006, the rights to develop the Russian-language segment were bought by SUP Fabrik , co-owned by billionaire Alexander Mamut.
As it turned out, I also signed up for LiveJournal in August 2006, but got used to it more or less a bit later, starting to get involved in the life of the community only after 2-3 months later. Therefore, I missed the introduction of bloggers to the new administration - but judging by the fact that the word "SUP" has already become abusive - it was enchanting.
The next year of LJ’s life was probably the most vivid: the political atmosphere in the country worsened, debates intensified in LJ, and the show “opinion leaders of all LJ versus SUP” was added to the dynamics of “guards” and “liberals”.
Apparently, the SUP company did not pay much attention to such trifles as the blogging of some bloggers there; whose site is the main one. At the very least, I can do nothing other than a complete lack of respect for users and an understanding of the significance of such a trifle as a team for a collective blogging service, the fact that just a year later the SUP company examined its sites, found them in good condition and came to the conclusion that redeeming LJ entirely will be a good business decision.
So, at the end of 2007, Six Apart, founded by Brad Fitzpatrick, was completely bought out by the Russians for surprisingly modest, from today's point of view, $ 30 million.
This is not very good when a resource whose life-giving energy rests on an eternal conflict between a pro-government party and the opposition, endlessly generating content that attracts the main audience, suddenly finds itself in the pocket of one pro-government billionaire. Especially given the already drowned reputation of his administration at this point.
However, this quickly passed - and after six months, there were two billionaires: Alisher Usmanov joined Mamut as the new co-owner of "SUP".
Among the "liberal" part of the core of the audience, apocalyptic moods grew. There was a feeling that we had all been sold all at once, like serfs, and now we are the peasant theater of the master, who can now at any moment order an unwanted serf to shut up his mouth with his fingernail.
However, in hindsight it seems to me that the search for political motives in the purchase of MJ and Usmanov LJ was exaggerated. What looked like a seizure of a stronghold of freedom of speech could very well be an exclusively business move.
In the end, it was already the time of the “Medvedev Thaw” of 2008-2012 - the last delay of the Runet before all fears came true. But then it was still possible to exhale. Medvedev met with Deniskin (the forecast about Habr’s exit to a new level came true just the opposite: Medvedev was soon lowered).
Most likely, neither Usmanov nor Mamut had a clue how online communities are managed, especially when it comes to the loudest and most capricious Runet community - and it does not seem that they even reached the first step: to understand that they are dealing with people.
I suppose, however, that the horror that seemed to me then with the serf theaters was also not about that - judging by the way the comrade billionaires treated LJ, they perceived the audience as cattle - and not in a bad sense, but in the literal sense: cattle, which pasture weeds grass - the main thing is to count on the heads - is there a litter, or a loss?
The years of SUP Media financial experiments began, which had already turned into a media holding by that time, together with LJ and apart from the rest of their projects. Effective managers constantly gathered and thought about who to milk, whom to cut, how to brood and milk yield, looked into their ears, looked at their teeth, pulled their udders - in general, they tried to think of something so that this stubborn herd would begin to pay for itself.
Exodus of the "liberals" from the LiveJournal on Facebook
I must pay tribute to the “SUP”: they are all the same persistent. Because no one really wanted to leave - the "liberals" did not at all withdraw from the camp and did not fly away together.
Bloggers, especially the demographic group, which at that time constituted the political core of the LiveJournal, can indeed be a stubborn herd, an extremely inert mass, which is incredibly difficult to move somewhere. But the energetic leadership of SUP Media succeeded.
Once again, Silicon Valley came to the rescue: at the beginning of the 2000s, there was Livejournal, at the end the time came for Facebook, which was still actively growing, very young and attracting a “liberal camp” a) neutral American origin and administration; b) the fresh spirit of involvement in the global community.
Moreover, as the platform for publishing Facebook was and remains absolutely terrible - none of the actively writing users who migrated to Facebook from LiveJournal did not migrate silently, without altering aloud some period of acclimatization. Including me; Yes, LJ opportunities, with all its disadvantages, were not enough.
But this is also a hello to his SUP management: to lose people for whom the walls of texts are both passion and a source of income, often, and even manage to do it with special shame - losing them to the very same Facebook, which was as if specially repulsive for writing people is so physically uncomfortable that people get used to it with loud moans. Columnists, journalists, and just graphomaniacs got used to flourishing on Facebook, Zuckerberg's bonfire was what the light is (to this day is fair) - but no one thought to return to LiveJournal.
Effects
The split core, the LJ core, has cooled and died - what else could happen to it if the remaining half was, in fact, a single camp? Moreover, really internally more connected than the "liberal" party - the leaders of the "guards" worked either in the already quite consolidated pro-Kremlin media, or in political technology firms - they had nowhere to physically crack.
In this sense, the much more atomized “liberal” party turned out to be more capable of maintaining the light - if they were alone without a single “guard” nearby, the “liberals” would immediately split into two camps - all the more so in the absence of a common enemy it became clear that “Liberals” actually consist, for the most part, of liberals and leftists — good old enemies, democrats against the communists.
The “guards” taunted these eternal internal graters in the “liberal camp” - but the fate of LJ after the outcome of the “liberals” gave rise to a dilemma: worse - the constant willingness to quarrel, which, in fact, preserves the light of the community - or disciplined solidarity, which, remaining without a beloved enemy, instantly turned into stone? I will leave the question open.
Not the outcome of the "liberals" killed LJ - the destruction of the bright core of the audience killed LJ. This core was the largest political space of Runet, its Forum in the ancient Roman sense, at which people who were “segmented and segregated by their media, but after work they ended up at the Forum — and no one wrote little hands tired, drawing to themselves the audience of all the other media in which they worked at once. And the administration managed to squeeze out one of the two groups forming this core of the group.
The core of LiveJournal has gone out.
Since the history of the Russian LJ segment from the very beginning was so closely connected with the political history of Russia itself, I would have drawn a conditional border, a point of no return for the former, live LJ in 2012. The political core by this time had already reliably and irrevocably split, dispersing along platforms.
However, left without a political community, LJ still retained for some time the last political group - followers of Alexei Navalny.
LiveJournal of Navalny, by the way - is obviously the most striking, but not the only example of something original, born in LiveJournal due to its capabilities and grown out of its community.
These were some kind of probes, hinting that the LJ community, in fact, accumulated enough potential for a complete generational change, during which the tops of the tops would be occupied by original and original blogs that could emerge and become so thanks to LJ. And the talk is not only about politics, but also, for example, psychology . But in the end, it turned into a tantalizing continuation of the scene after the credits of the film, which failed at the box office - and buried the sequel.
Roskomnadzor finally turned over Navalny’s page in LJ history (or LJ’s page in Navalny’s history) in 2014, in response to which his LJ was blocked, Navalny moved to standalon.
Afterlife
SUP, it turns out, pecked its existence in 2013. Was dispersed by pissing rags? No, combined with Rambler and Poster. Poor "Poster".
In 2014, all this economy renamed Rambler & Co . I want to believe - realizing the optionality of perpetuating the glorious name of SUP for centuries? However, judging by the smoothness of the process of dissolution of "SUP" in the bowels of Rambler & Co - they are still somewhere inside. Well, fortunately, Rambler can manage projects and teach them ... oh wait.
The story “How SUP Fabrik wanted to weed the LJ bed and accidentally made a sepukka for itself” was an exceptional example of community management in which management consistently corroded the community - and deserves a more attentive and even deeper analysis. And then, after all, find such other courageous ones. Even among a wide range of pro-government media, SUP stood out - no one else repeated their mistakes: the rest of the showbiz bosses seem to understand the value of the conflict to maintain attention - and political shows take center stage on all federal TV channels, and on all shows show is going on.Of course, LJ still exists. But this is a completely different celestial body. There is no political core in it and will not be in it again.
It seems that there is no alternative to it - LJ does not have any topic of similar scale to replace politics, and it cannot be - politics is one of the most addictive and widespread topics in public space.
Previously, the political core attracted a significant part of the audience, and the first association with LJ was “politics”. Now is the first association with LJ - .. "jeans"?
Instead of large topics uniting user clusters, there are more likely clientele of popular bloggers. But this is not a community.
One of the things that distinguishes the community from site visitors is the existence of a temporary dimension as a significant factor. Community is not only a reach, but also a process. And this is exactly what SUP destroyed in Learn.
So is LJ alive or dead?
To answer this question, I had to write an entire article: the feeling that LJ died many years ago, nevertheless, fought hard with their shameful, but, nevertheless, ongoing existence.
But now I have found an explanation. I will not speak for everyone, but when I say that LJ has died - I mean the community. And not only the notorious political core - while it was in the center, several smaller clusters were grouped around it - for example, ru_auto and related thematic communities. Without a kernel, they all end up too far from each other - just a bunch of small communities on random topics with falling chances of crossing the audience.
Actually, as LJ SUP saw it, he did it like that: killing, in the end, the community, but preserving the site with traffic. Now these people are somewhere inside the "Rambler", who himself is still the zinger.
But to keep LJ as one site without a center will be difficult, if at all possible - entropy will continue to grow until atomic bonds between the smaller communities break completely. This can probably be considered death. Or the completion of the decomposition of a corpse.