the Goat's been sold!

[pyesetz]

Doomsday is coming soon!  For those who haven't heard, LJ's founder brad has finally admitted that he did sell out LJ to the MovableType people.  He did this for a very understandable reason—he would rather write computer programs than run a business.  Still, there are some worrisome elements in his announcement.  Let me prime the rumor mill with these between-the-lines implications that I see in his text:

• The most immediate noticable effect is expected to be that LJ will "get prettier".  This suggests that we will never get the USENET-style interface that many have wanted, as it would divert people from seeing the new glitz and the spamvertisements that Brad says will never come.
• Paidmember prices are not changing in order not to "anger people unnecessarily".  I predict that the price will go up after six months.
• The new Terms of Service will be less user-friendly and more lawyer-friendly and you will be prohibited from posting until you agree to them.  This may imply a general clean-up of LJ to be more lawyer-friendly.  Perhaps everyone's favorite communities, like show_your_cock and show_your_pussy, will be banned by the lawyers as too legally risky to allow.
• LJ will be mass-suspending the journals of people who seem to have been lying about their age.  Be sure to back up your journal in case this random scourge gets you!
• "We feel that there's a lot of synergy between our two companies and we both benefit from this relationship by bringing a lot of value-add to the table.  By focusing on our core competencies we can continue to provide robust, turn-key, industry-leading solutions while also lowering Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to our valued clients."  Brad claims that this text is "gibberish" but he said it anyway.  What it seems to mean to me is that LJ will be following SixApart's lead in rachetting up prices on their products.
• New additions to LJ will no longer be open-source.  Future enhancements to LJ will be closed-source.  No one will be able to see all the hacks the FBI will insist that they add in order to track the journals of suspicious persons.  Brad will be insisting (at least for awhile) that the "infrastructure guts" remain open-source, but the new "pretty" software will be hoarded.

So what can you do about this catastrophe?  There are some things you really should do:

1. Back up your journal!
2. Back up the comments on your journal!
3. Back up your user-icons and pictures!
4. (Paidmembers only) Enable the option that sends you emailed copies of any comments you make on other people's journal.

This has been a public-service announcement.

Comments

[jainasia.livejournal.com]

joy of freakin' joys.

[bananasloth.livejournal.com]

CRAP! >.

[shy-matsi.livejournal.com]

I can't seem to find the backup feature, did they take it away?? it was so convient.. I haven't used it in a while.. I can't remember if they took it away and thats why I haven't used it, or if I just haven't used it..

[pyesetz]

LJ offers export.bml, which backs up one month of entries at a time.  There are some clients (e.g., one written in Perl and another written using .net) which offer LJ backup and also uploading to other blog formats in case you decide to jump ship.

To download comments you have received, use export_comments.bml which is quite user-unfriendly, especially for a voluminous journal like yours.

[shy-matsi.livejournal.com]

ahhh.. they changed the export bml a little since I last used it.. you used to be able to download a month with comments and all.. but thats ok. I don't really need all the comments :)
thanks! :)

[warrenwolfy.livejournal.com]

Maybe yes, maybe no.

However, I liken it to the oft-cited "Death of Usenet (tm)". True or not, does it really matter?

I didn't really care when BBSs died, although I had to listen to years of woe and sorrow from those predicting their death. I didn't care when Fidonet died either. And the fact that Usenet is still around kinda suprises me, actually.

So LJ will probably die someday, okay, yeah. But does it really matter? People will just move on to something else.

LJ is popular because they've got a good thing going. If they screw it up, then it becomes like the other thousands of big-ticket failed websites out there and it disappears into obscurity too.

[rabitguy.livejournal.com]

I don't believe all that much will change. A small company like SixApart is certainly smart enough to know that major changes to the service is going to make them a new public enemy #1 of three million LJ users. If Livejournal.com is self-sufficient, why bother?

On the other paw, there are many ways that SixApart has done blogging better than Danga and to see some of those features filter back into LJ might be a good thing. Allowing Javascript or Flash in S2 templates would be nice! Trackback is apparently in the works.

I don't really mourn the death of BBSes. Many of them were run like little dictatorships. (my own, included. ;)

[evilsibe.livejournal.com]

How do you back up your lj?