LiveJournal News

This month is Mental Health Awareness Month, so the LiveJournal team is offering users a chance to support the Depression and Bipolar Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping improve the lives of those suffering from mood disorders. Proceeds from purchases of the Emerging Sun v-gift during May will be donated to the DBSA, so feel free to buy one. Or, if you really want to rack up some good karma points, get a bunch!

And don't forget: Mother's Day is this Sunday. Be a dear and check out the v-gifts shop. Send something that'll make her smile.


L to R: Emerging Sun, #1 Mom, Gift Basket, Chocolates, A Dozen Red Roses


We know how you salivate over the prospect of new themes, especially when they're designed by users with a unique handle on both form and function.


L to R: Shiny, River at Night, Live and Learn, Vector Drips.

( Winners of the HP 'What Do You Have to Say?' Theme Design Contest )


We'd like to remind you that the nomination process for LiveJournal Advisory Board user-representatives has begun. If you think you're fit for the job, now's the time to nominate yourself! After all, you're the only who can do it. In two weeks, on the 22nd, the voting process will begin; we'll remind you about it again here.

If you're interested in keeping up with the nominations, watch lj_election_en. We'll post the results and announce the winner by the end of the day on May 30th. The new user-representatives will be seated on June 1st. Further details can also be found in lj_2008.

Advisory Board Nominations Begin

This morning we are opening the nomination process for the user-representative positions on the LiveJournal Advisory Board. A full description of the process can be found here.

To get you started, here are the basic things you should know:

- You may only nominate yourself
- Each nominee will need 100 motions of support in order to be eligible to be a candidate
- We ask that you keep your comments on the nomination posts to "I support this nomination" or something to that effect; be kind to those who will need to count the "supports", please.
- Although the nominations and election poll will take place in lj_election_en, you do not need to watch the community in order to keep up with the election; we'll announce everything here as well.

Everyone here at LiveJournal is looking forward to this first-ever User-Representative election! We'd like to thank everyone who is participating. Some words from our current Advisory Board members:

danah boyd: “LiveJournal is filled with very passionate users. These users have helped shaped LJ's various communities over the last decade and it gives me great joy that LJ is recognizing and incorporating users' voices into the decision-making processes. Having user representatives from different parts of LJ on the Advisory Board will help make sure that the company is meeting the needs of its diverse constituents.”

Esther Dyson: "I'm sure we'll learn a lot from the process, and later on from the two users selected as well. Especially, I hope that the discussions before the voting will be more meaningful and more focused on policy than those in some offline campaigns."

Brad Fitzpatrick: "It's cool that SUP is getting users involved with the LiveJournal decision-making process. I look forward to seeing who the community elects and the results of our efforts working together."

Professor Lawrence Lessig: “The user elections will provide a critical check on LJ's process of maintaining a valuable and trustworthy environment for the LJ community. The mandate of the elections will give the user representatives pride of place among the members of the Advisory Board. Each of us will look to them to guide us in our judgment about how best to make LJ the community we all aspire that it will be. I look forward to welcoming the user representatives, and learning a great deal from them.”


chasethestars has also made some banners for you to use, if you'd like to show your support for the candidate of your choice!

( Banners + code for you to use! )

Advisory Board Elections
Do you think you would make a great addition to the LJ Advisory Board? Well now is your chance to nominate yourself! The nomination process begins May 5th and voting will take place from May 22nd - 29th. The newly-elected user-representative for the Advisory Board will begin his or her term just a few days after the votes are counted on June 1, 2008. You can find all the information you'll need about the process, as well as the exact rules and dates in lj_2008. We'll post in news again on May 5th to remind you to submit your nomination. We can't wait to see all of the amazing nominees!

Introducing LiveJournal Labs
While most of us are busy working on features and fixes for LiveJournal, we wanted to create a forum where we could showcase some of our latest ideas that are not quite ready for the prime time. Some of those ideas might never get integrated into the product, while some of them might become separate services.

The new forum is called LiveJournal Labs and can be found at http://www.livejournal.com/lab.bml. We will be adding new applications over the next few months. In the meantime, please play around and let us know what you think!

Post to Your LJ (and ALL your blogs) from Facebook
Blog It powered by TypePad is Six Apart's new cross-platform blogging application for Facebook. Blog It brings some of the best social networking aspects of Facebook to blogging, making it easy to blog from within Facebook. Whether you you blog using LiveJournal, Movable Type, Blogger, Tumblr, or numerous other services, now you can update everything and everyone via one easy-to-create post on Facebook.

For more information about Blog It powered by TypePad, please visit http://blogit.typepad.com/.

• The Panther Express Content Delivery Network is now serving Userpics, CSS and LJ image files. This will speed up the loading of pages, especially for our international users.
• The thread expander is now supported by "The Boxer" and "Variable Flow" layouts, as are Custom styles.
• Polls can now be closed by the poll creator, and re-opened again if need be.
• OpenID friends can now leave comments in journals that have been marked as “friends only.”
• There's a new “Delete All” button in your inbox that allows you to easily delete all of your messages.

LiveJournal Housewarming TOMORROW!
Are you going to be in the Bay Area tomorrow night? If so, please stop by the LiveJournal offices in San Francisco and help us celebrate our new office space, meet the new additions to our team, and discuss all of the exciting things we're working on for 2008 and beyond. The get-together starts at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow night. We'll have snacks and drinks, so all you need to bring is yourself!

Address: 576 Folsom Street (at 2nd Street, next to the Courtyard Marriott)

If you think you can make it, let us know in the comments, or... just show up. We can't wait to see you!