LiveJournal News

Advisory Board Election Winners

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:44:04 GMT

And the Winner Is . . .

The votes have been tallied, the results are in, and we have a winner (two, actually). Congratulations to the newly elected user representatives to the LJ Advisory Board: from lj_election_en, it's kylecassidy, and from lj_election_ru, it's nekbke! You can see the full breakdown of results for lj_election_en here and for lj_election_ru here. Thanks to everyone for your participation.

Advisory Board Elections, New Themes, Green by Design Contest

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:44:48 GMT

Advisory Board Elections
New Green Themes
Green by Design Contest

The Polls Are Open!

Calling LJ users to the polls—voting starts today, June 22, for user representatives to the LiveJournal Advisory Board! Voting takes place in lj_election_ru for Cyrillic-language users and in lj_election_en for all other users. Here's what you need to know to be an informed voter:

Polls are open from 9:00 a.m. PDT and MSD, June 22, to 4:30 p.m. PDT and MSD, June 26.

Only accounts created before March 31, 2009, are eligible to vote in this year’s election.

Only one account per registered email address may vote.

The candidates in lj_election_en are webqatch, vichan, kylecassidy, jameth, and daphaknee. Click on the username to see a candidate's nomination statement.

If no candidate receives a clear 51% of the first-choice vote, the winners will be determined using an Instant Runoff process.

We'll announce the winners and the results Monday, June 29, 2009, after the results have been examined for accuracy and veracity, and (if needed) run through the Instant Runoff tallying program.

The new user representatives to the LJ Advisory Board will be seated and begin their terms on July 1, 2009.

Now get out there and vote!

New Green Themes

Although Kermit the Frog might have struggled with being green, we think it's not really that hard to go green. And we have some new green themes for your journal to help make it even easier for you.

We've partnered with One Million Acts of Green, brought to you by Cisco to bring you these three new themes:

A green theme is the perfect way to show the world just how much you love our planet. Plus, by adding a green theme to your journal, you’ll be supporting One Million Acts of Green, a collaborative environmental campaign encouraging everyone to go green one act at a time. The goal? A million acts of green.

After you add a green theme to your journal, visit the One Million Acts of Green site and record your own Acts of Green. Whether you turn the lights off when they're not in use, ride your bike to school/work, or just get your friends to start recording their Acts of Green, every single act makes a difference.

Green by Design Contest

While we're on the green theme, we thought the designers among you might be interested in this Green by Design contest. To enter, all you have to do is create a Green Badge with an earth-friendly design and/or eco-minded message. The winning badge will link to the One Million Acts of Green site. You can get full details and information on how to enter at lj_contests.

Advisory Board Election Announcement

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:02:19 GMT

Let the Nominating Begin!

As of today, nominations for user representatives to the Advisory Board are open. You can only nominate yourself, so if you want to run, you need to join lj_election_en or lj_election_ru and post an entry in the election community stating that you are nominating yourself as a candidate for the Advisory Board elections. To support a nominee, comment on their nomination post in the election community with a clear declaration of support. Nominations close at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, June 19, 2009. You can find full details on the election and the nomination process in news and on the profile pages of lj_election_en and lj_election_ru. Happy nominating!

Advisory Board Election Announcement

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:47:23 GMT

Advisory Board Elections

Calling all potential candidates—nominations for user representatives to the LJ Advisory Board open next week! As we announced last month, we're holding Advisory Board elections this month and we want you to take part.

Nominations for user representatives begin on Monday, June 15, 2009, and close on Friday, June 19, 2009. All the election action—including the nomination process—will take place in lj_election_en and lj_election_ru. But don't worry, we'll announce all election happenings in news, so even if you’re not watching the two election communities, you'll still be able to participate and know what is going on.

Nominations

As stated above, nominations open on Monday, June 15, 2009, at 9:00 a.m. PDT and MSD, and close on Friday, June 19, 2009, at 4:30 p.m. PDT and MSD. We will post again in news on the 15th so that as many users as possible are aware of events.

Ready to declare your candidacy? This is how the nomination process works:

Users may only nominate themselves; no third-party nominations will be accepted. To nominate yourself, join the election community (lj_election_ru for Cyrillic-language users and lj_election_en for all other users) and make a post any time during the nomination period. Posts to the election communities will be moderated—all posts that meet the guidelines described below will be approved.

In your nomination post, you should:

Clearly state that you are nominating yourself as a candidate for the Advisory Board elections.

Include a statement about why you think you would make a good representative or why you’d like to serve.

Use an lj-cut if the post is more than two paragraphs.

Set Comment Screening to All Comments.

Optionally, you may also include a link to an entry in your journal or a community that further states your position or platform, or that has your answers to these five suggested questions, also found in the community profiles of lj_election_en and lj_election_ru:
1. What do you think is the value of LiveJournal?
2. What changes would you like to see LiveJournal make in the next year?
3. Why do you want to be the elected representative?
4. What do you think are the community’s greatest concerns?
5. What skills, qualifications, or unique perspective do you think you would bring to this position?

Supporting a Nominee

To support a nominee’s candidacy, you should comment to their nomination entry stating “I support this nomination” or something substantially similar. You may support multiple candidates’ nominations. Nominees need 300 motions of support in order to be invited to be a candidate in the election. Candidates are asked to assist by only unscreening those comments that express this motion of support, and election moderators will help with that process.

Once a post has comments of support from 300 different users, we will send the nominee a certification form to the email address currently registered and validated for use with their account. The form outlines the responsibilities and commitments that the user representative will likely have and asks the nominee to certify that they are willing and able to serve if elected. In order to be included in the election poll, a nominee must return this signed form via fax or email scan by 5:00 p.m. PDT and MSD on Friday, June 19, 2009. Instructions are included in the form.

Campaigning

It's hard to run for office without campaigning, and naturally we expect nominees will want to campaign for this election. Go for it. We do ask, however, that candidates and their supporters stay within the LiveJournal Terms of Service (i.e. no spamming, no encouraging others to spam other journals on your behalf, and such activities). Candidates who wish to serve as an Advisory Board representative are asked to maintain behavior befitting the position.

The Election

We will post the election poll starting at 9:00 a.m. PDT and MSD on June 22, 2009, and closing at 4:30 p.m. PDT and MSD, June 26, 2009. We will announce the opening of the polls in news and post the election polls in lj_election_en and lj_election_ru. Users will be able to select their first, second, and third choice.

Voting in the poll
Cyrillic-language users may only vote in the lj_election_ru poll, and all other users may only vote in the lj_election_en poll. Additional restrictions include:

Only accounts created before March 31, 2009, are eligible to vote in this year’s poll.

Only one account per email address may vote.

Tallying the results
After the polls close on June 26, 2009, we will determine the winner of the elections in the following way:

If a user receives 51% of the first-choice vote, that candidate will be declared the winner.

If no user receives 51% of the first-choice vote, we will begin an Instant Runoff process. The user with the lowest tally for first-choice vote will be eliminated, and the second-choice candidate on those ballots will be substituted as first choice. This process will continue (drop the lowest candidate, reassign to next vote, tally again) until any user has 51% of the vote.

If all ballots are exhausted and no candidate has 51% of the vote, we will return to the first round and award the election to the candidate with the most first-choice votes.

New Advisory Board Members

We’ll post the results and announce the winner on Monday, June 29, 2009, after the results have been examined for accuracy and veracity, and (if needed) run through the Instant Runoff tallying program. The new user representatives to the LJ Advisory Board will be seated and begin their terms on July 1, 2009.

LJ Birthday, New Mood Theme, HarrisInteractive Survey

Thu, 21 May 2009 23:09:19 GMT

Note: We have disabled email notifications for this news release due to problems that have caused some users to receive duplicate emails of our recent news post. We expect to re-enable these email notifications with the next news post.

Birthday Suit
New Mood Theme
Your Opinion Matters

Our Birthday Suit

You might have noticed that LJ is sporting a new look today in honor of our birthday. The Home page is all dressed up in a new header to show off our birthday spirit. And to share the birthday spirit with everyone, there's a new birthday gift in the Gift Shop. If you have a Paid or Permanent Account, or have had your account for 5 years or more, the birthday v-gift is free for you to send to up to 5 friends. So sing a rousing round of Happy Birthday and get on over to the Gift Shop to start spreading the birthday love around. The party doesn't stop here, however: Look for more special birthday fun to come over the next few months.

In the Mood

Looking for different ways to express the emotions behind your posts? This week's release includes a new mood theme to help you get across the mood you were in on your visit to update.bml. The new manga-inspired theme is called Full Stop and you can find it on the Mood Theme Preview page—check it out and let everyone know how you feel.

Ready for a mood change but not sure how to do it? Take a look at this FAQ for instructions on how to change your mood theme using the themes available on the Mood Theme Preview page. If you have a Paid Account and complex emotions that aren't adequately expressed with the available themes, you can create your own Custom Mood Theme. If you have complex emotions to express but don't have a Paid Account, it might be time to upgrade your account.

Your Opinion Matters

As part of our efforts to get better insights into our audience of readers as well as writers, we’re participating in the spring HarrisInteractive NetObserver survey, which runs through May 31. The survey builds a portrait of Internet users and LJ users—and you have a chance to contribute your opinions. If you're an LJ user in a European country, including the UK and Germany, you also have the chance to win one of several prizes totaling 5,000 euros in value! Of course, the opinions of users in the U.S. and other countries are welcome, too. All you have to do is click, tell us what you think, and enter the drawing for your chance to win.

For more details about this week's release, visit lj_releases.

Advisory Board Elections General Announcement

Fri, 15 May 2009 21:06:19 GMT

Advisory Board Elections
Theme Design Contest Postponed

Advisory Board Elections

Have you ever wanted to be more involved in shaping the future of LiveJournal? Do you have strong opinions about the kinds of features and services LJ should offer its users? Are you ready to play a more active role in the LiveJournal community? Wondering how you can act on your vision for LJ? Run for user representative to the LiveJournal Advisory Board! Advisory Board elections are nigh and now is the time to throw your hat in the ring.

The LiveJournal Advisory Board is an international group of well-informed, highly respected users who help guide the values of LiveJournal by advising the management of LiveJournal Inc. on the development and operations of the LiveJournal platform. Current members of the Board include danahboyd, courtjesther, brad, lessig, and suhel_seth. Advisory Board members each bring a unique perspective to the Board: law, business, knowledge of social media, and awareness of LiveJournal history.

But without the unique perspective of the LiveJournal community, the Board is incomplete. That's why the Board also has two user representatives—users elected by the users—among its members. Here's how it works:

Two Elections

Just as we did last year, we are holding two elections: one to elect a representative from the non-Cyrillic community (English speakers) and one to elect a representative from the Cyrillic-language users (Russian speakers). Posts regarding the elections will be announced in news and ru_news. The elections will be held at the same time and governed by the same rules. The decision to hold two separate elections reflects the fact that the LiveJournal community can broadly be split into two different segments of Russian and non-Russian language users.

Timeline

This year, the nomination and election process will take place during the last two weeks of June. Open nominations, and the chance for users to second the nominations, will be held the week of June 15–19. When the nominations close, LiveJournal will certify the candidates who have been nominated and those candidates will have time to communicate with users regarding positions or campaigning. The elections will open up on June 22 and close on June 26. The new LiveJournal User Representatives to the Advisory Board will be seated on July 1, 2009.

Requirements for Candidacy

To be considered as a candidate for the Advisory Board elections, a user must be:

at least 18 years old as of May 1, 2009

a LiveJournal user since December 31, 2008

nominated and elected using their primary LiveJournal username

willing to use their primary LiveJournal username for Advisory Board business, either by using their actual journal to make posts in official communities or using it to respond to comments and official threads

willing to serve under their full legal name, including having their name recorded on minutes, correspondence, opinions, or other material in relation to their service

available to travel to the once-a-year, in-person meeting in San Francisco, CA, to be held in September (travel costs will be reimbursed)

available for quarterly conference calls, and for consultation via telephone or email correspondence should a situation arise that would need their advice

willing to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement in relation to the work and discussions of the Advisory Board

Requirements for Voting

To be eligible to vote in the election, a user must have created their account before March 31, 2009. Voting will take place in the form of a poll, which will remain open during the week of June 22–26. The winner will be determined via Instant Runoff Voting. This means that users will be able to select their first, second, and third choice candidates. In the event there is no clear majority, the lowest-ranked candidates will be eliminated and the users who selected those candidates as first choice will have their vote reassigned to their second-choice candidate. This system is repeated until a clear winner is evident.

Serving on the Board

Logistics
The LiveJournal Advisory Board will meet in person this year in September, in San Francisco, CA. It will hold quarterly conference calls with the management to consider major issues. LiveJournal Inc. will reimburse all travel and related expenses, and offer an honorarium, which may be paid directly to the member or to a charity of his or her choosing.

Structure
The LiveJournal Advisory Board is independent of the LiveJournal Inc. management structure.

Elected user representatives serve a one-year term on the Advisory Board.

Should a user representative of the LiveJournal Advisory Board become unable to perform the necessary duties, he or she shall inform LiveJournal Inc. management in writing. After his or her resignation has been accepted, the user with the next-highest amount of votes in the final vote tally from the previous election will be asked to take up the open position on the Advisory Board.

Meetings
The agenda for meetings and conference calls will be agreed upon between LiveJournal Inc. management and the Advisory Board. Management will respond promptly to any request for documentation.

The LiveJournal Advisory Board may publish position papers by majority vote, including dissenting position papers should LiveJournal Inc. management not follow their recommendations. Beyond the posted statements, LiveJournal Advisory Board members will be held to confidentiality and will be required to sign legally binding non-disclosure agreements to protect the integrity of Board discussions. Advisory Board members are welcome to discuss their role and the work of the Board in public forums but are asked to respect the confidential nature of the discussions that take place.

Birthday Theme Design Contest Rescheduled

In April we announced that later in the spring we'd be holding a special Theme Design Contest as part of our ongoing tenth birthday celebrations. What happened? We ran into a little delay with the contest, which meant that it would overlap with the Advisory Board elections, which would then in turn need to be pushed back. Rather than having a series of cascading delays, we're going to just switch up the order and have the elections first, followed by the theme design contest. So look for the contest to start after the votes are tallied and the results are in, and in the meantime be thinking about your design!

Happy Birthday, LiveJournal!

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:42:53 GMT

Happy Birthday, LJ!

Cue the cake and candles, it's our birthday! On April 15, 1999, brad registered the LiveJournal.com domain name, giving birth to the web's original community blogging platform. Ten crazy years later (and not without some growing pains), LiveJournal is still going strong and we're ready to celebrate. It's not every year that you turn 10, so we have lots of things lined up over the next few months.

Birthday Theme Design Contest

Everyone likes to get dressed up for their birthday and we thought it would be fun to come up with some new birthday suits for the site. Or rather, that it might be fun for you (if you're into S2 and CSS) to come up with some new outfits i.e. journal themes. If you love making new themes for styles like Bloggish and Flexible Squares, the LiveJournal Birthday Theme Contest is for you. Submissions open on April 29 and we want to give you time to fire up your imagination. The theme of this theme contest is "LiveJournal Turns 10," but other than that we're leaving it as open as possible so as not to stifle your creativity. You can use Frank, the LiveJournal logo, base your theme on an existing or past LiveJournal site scheme, or any number of things relating to LJ's tenth birthday. Winning entries will be featured in the Journal Themes on the customize page. We'll announce all the rules and technical requirements here and in lj_design on April 29 when the contest officially starts. We can't wait to see what you come up with.

Commemorative Writer's Block and LJ Spotlight

Part of getting older is looking back on your life and reflecting on those special moments. For the next several weeks we'll be running Writer's Block questions about milestones in your own LiveJournal life. We're mixing these in with the regular questions, so keep an eye on your Home page for your chance to wax nostalgic about topics like your first post ever and more.

We don't want LJ Spotlight to feel left out of the celebrating, which is why starting on April 20, the Spotlight will be shining its bright light back on some old favorites. Each week we're going to feature a popular pick from the past (kind of like the Greatest Hits of Spotlight) alongside two newcomers. That way we can all make new friends but keep the old.

Sneak Peek at the Birthday Book

One birthday plan we've had in the works for a while now is an anthology of LiveJournal entries from the past 10 years. (Maybe we've mentioned this before?) We're very busy finalizing the content of the book (let's just say we have new respect for all the work that goes into creating a book) but we wanted to give you a little advance preview of what's in it. Starting today, we'll be posting a weekly excerpt from the book over at lj_turns10. First up, it's Frank!

Coming Soon to a Journal Near You: Attack of the Blog Slurper!

We're using Blurb to make our book, and we're having so much fun that we want you to get in on the bookish good times, too. That's why we're super-excited (!!) to announce our new partnership with the friendly folks at Blurb. Blurb makes it easy to create your own bookstore-quality books, using their free BookSmart software and your content. Even better, Blurb makes it easy to turn your journal into a book with their Blog Slurper. In just a few short clicks, the Blog Slurper pulls (or slurps, if you will) your journal entries into the BookSmart software, where you can format it to your heart's desire. In less than a week your book will be printed, bound, and on its way to you. So if you've always wanted to hold your LJ in your hands, this is your chance.

Photographers should definitely check out the Blurb Photography Book Now contest. With a distinguished panel of jurors and a Grand Prize of $25,000, the contest is a great opportunity to showcase your work to an international audience.

To get you started, Blurb is offering LiveJournal users a little birthday discount. From now through June 30, 2009, you can get $10 off the price of a $29.95 book. Just enter promo code livej10anv when you order your book. Click here to let the books begin.

Tell Your Story

That's enough about us for one news post. Let's talk about you. We're sure you have a story of greatness to share, and our friends at Nature Made want to hear it.

Greatness doesn't have to come in big packages. Whether you volunteer at an animal shelter, play in a band, or try to live a green life, it's the impact and inspiration of your personal story that matters. Answer today’s Writer’s Block: “What change have you made in your life that you're most proud of?” to share your story and inspire others.

After you’ve answered the Writer’s Block, you can submit your story of greatness at NatureMade.com and enter to win $1000 and a spot in the Nature Made “Fuel Your Greatness” documentary. If you have a Basic, Paid, or Permanent account and want to share your story with Nature Made, click here to answer the question.

Delete Comments, Report Spambots, Accelerator Add-on, Find Your Friends

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:25:56 GMT

Happy April! All joking aside, we thought you might find these new features helpful in your day-to-day LJ life:

Delete All Comments from a User

It's a bummer when an unwelcome guest pays a visit to your journal and leaves a bunch of rude comments behind. Cleaning up after them can take a long time. That's why we've made it easier to mass-delete comments from a single user in a post. When you click Delete on one comment by that user, a dialog box pops up that gives you the option to delete all the comments by that user in the post. Happy spring cleaning!

Report a Spambot

We've also made it easier to report a user that you suspect of being a spambot. The pop-up menu that's visible when you hover your mouse over the userhead icon now includes an option to report that user as a bot.

Just click on "Report a Bot" to get the investigation going.

Accelerator in Internet Explorer 8

The latest version of Internet Explorer has a new add-on for LiveJournal users. Accelerator makes it easy for you to quickly post an entry about an article or web page to your journal without having to leave the site where you found the item you're writing about. Just select the text you want to post and let Accelerator do the rest.

Have You Found Your Friends?

The Find Your Friends feature is up and running, helping connect LiveJournal users with friends from their web-based email contacts who are also on LJ. Whether you're new to LJ or you're a longtime user, you just might be able to make an old friend into a new Friend. You can set your own preferences for being found or not found on the Account Settings page under the Privacy tab.

As always, you can get the full details on the latest release in lj_releases.

Friends Page redesign project

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:08:39 GMT

Over the past few months, we've been working hard to respond to all of your requests from the past year or two regarding what you want out of a social networking and blogging site. With that in mind, beginning tomorrow you will have the opportunity to opt-in to the beta test for our new Friends Page format. We'd like you to try it out and let us know how it works for you. Here are the two major changes we've made:

Automatic lj-cuts

One of the most common complaints we get is that even your best friends don't do you the courtesy of using the lj-cut on long entries. We consulted with a cutting-edge market research firm and concluded that no one really wants to read more than 140 characters about what their friends are doing. And with our new automatic lj-cut, you won't have to! From now on, all those wordy entries on your Friends Page will automatically be cut at the 140-character sweet spot.

Adding Notifications

Have you ever wondered what your friends were up to when you weren't watching their every move? Would you like to see, in real time, what they're doing on LiveJournal? Well, now you can. We've added notifications to your Friends Page! Whenever one of your friends uploads a new userpic, adds or removes friends, comments on an entry, changes a setting, or uploads a picture to Scrapbook, this information will be added as an entry on your Friends Page.

frank has been alpha-testing these changes and he loves his new Friends Page!!!

To opt in to beta-testing, and to give us your thoughts on these changes, please go to feedback. We think this is a vast improvement to LiveJournal and just know you're going to love it!

Keeping Your Journal Safe

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:43:56 GMT

Recently some journals and communities have been broken into, their contents deleted, and their owners locked out. We want to explain how this can happen and give you some steps you can take to help prevent this from happening to your journal or community.

First of all, we would like to dispel the rumor that these break-ins have something to do with the accounts that have recently been friending large numbers of users (sometimes called friending bots). We do not believe these are related. The problem appears to stem from Hotmail's policy of recycling inactive email addresses.

The recent break-ins resulted from hijackers finding and accessing lapsed Hotmail accounts that were used with LiveJournal accounts and publicly displayed on Profile pages in the past. You should be aware that Hotmail recycles email addresses that haven't been used in more than a year. If you validated a Hotmail address for your journal and displayed it publicly in the past, but then let the address lapse, someone who finds and re-registers that address can use it to obtain control of the journal.

Managing Your Email Addresses

The best thing you can do to keep your account safe is to keep your password secure and make sure that you're in control of all the email addresses you have used with your account. We have added a Manage Email Addresses feature that allows you to delete email addresses that are no longer active. If you have been using your current validated email address for at least six months, you can delete all the other addresses associated with your account. If you validated your current email address less than six months ago, you must wait until you've been using it for six months to delete all the other addresses.

The checkboxes will be active if you can delete the address. You can manage your email addresses here.

Keeping Your Community Safe

To keep a community safe, you should remove all inactive maintainers. Make sure that the users listed as maintainers are actively maintaining the community. If any maintainer is no longer part of the community, don't leave them as community maintainers, even for sentimental reasons.

Using the Secret Question and Protecting Your Password

A great way to protect your password is to use the secret question. If you forget your password but no longer have access to the email you used to create your account, the secret question helps us verify that it's really you requesting your password. The secret question is only used when you forget your password or email; you don't need to answer the question when you just want to change your password or email. You can choose from a list of questions or you can create your own. We advise creating your own. The best questions, of course, have answers known only to you, so make sure you haven't inadvertently given away the answer somewhere, like talking about your first pet or where you went to high school on your journal. Another strategy is to make the answer to your secret question completely unrelated to the question. You can set your secret question here.

Even if no one has broken into your account, it's always a good idea to change your password periodically. Going through all the steps in this FAQ from time to time can save you a lot of trouble down the road. And it doesn't hurt to take a peek at your login history now and then, just to make sure it matches your actual activity.

Look Before You Click

Another aspect of the recent community hijackings is the planting of malicious links. Once the hijackers have gained control of a maintainer's email address and used it to remove all the other maintainers, they have been posting entries that may contain links to viruses and malware. Always practice safe clicking. Don't click on anything—even if it's posted by a friend—without hovering your mouse over the link and checking the status bar to make sure that what you're clicking is for real. You should also run any and all spyware/malware/antivirus programs on a regular basis. A basic Google search will turn up a number of free programs that you can use to protect your computer.

We're working on additional solutions to help prevent these kinds of break-ins from happening. The steps outlined in this post are some of the things you can do to help keep your account secure.

Find Your Friends, Pingbacks, Russia!, LJ Birthday Book, V-Gifts, and More

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:54:23 GMT

Find Your Friends
Pingbacks
Russia!
LJ Birthday Book
Featured V-Gifts
And More

Find Your Friends

EDIT: 3/6/09 The Find Your Friends feature is now up and running, ready to find your friends. We apologize for any problems you encountered with the feature.

~~EDIT: We're turning off the Find Your Friends feature until further notice. We'll update the post again next week and remove the strikethrough when the feature is back on.~~

Remember last November when we introduced the next step in our quest to help you find more Friends? Since then you might have noticed a dialog box when you logged in to your journal over the past few months. This friendly fellow wants you to set your preference for the new Find Your Friends feature, which goes live today. Find Your Friends allows users to search their web-based email contacts to see if they know anyone on LJ. Depending on what you set as your preference, you'll show up in search results with your username and email address, only your email address, or nothing at all (because not everyone wants to be found). You can read more about how the feature works here. You can find Find Your Friends under the Friends drop-down menu at the top of the Home page or your Profile page when you're logged in. Find Your Friends is opt-in, but you have to opt for one of the three setting options to make the dialog box go away. If you change your mind later and decide you want to be found (or not found), you can find the setting on the handy new Account Settings page under the Privacy tab, named Find by Email.

Ka-Ping!

Ever wondered who's linking to your posts in their journal or blog? We're introducing a new feature for Paid and Permanent Accounts that lets you track references to your posts using Pingbacks. Whenever someone links to one of your entries, you'll receive a notification in the form of a screened comment from pingback_bot. Get the full scoop on Pingbacks here at paidmembers and in the FAQ.

LiveJournal Live from Russia!

You probably already know that LiveJournal is the most popular blogging site in Russia. But for those of us who don't speak Russian or understand Cyrillic fonts, it can be hard to appreciate the wide and at times wacky world of the Russian blog scene. There's only so far a Google translation can get you. Luckily for us, now there's russiamagazine, a new community on LiveJournal from Russia! magazine where their team translates and posts the best of Russian LJ. Every week they scan the chatter and bring you the highlights, from posts to photos.This is your chance to see how another part of LJ lives, so check it out.

brad: The LJ Interview

Without Brad there would be no LJ, and without LJ there would be no LJ Tenth Anniversary book, so of course the book will not be without Brad!

The book will feature a scintillating interview with LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick that answers all of your burning questions (well, maybe not all of them—this book is work-safe, after all). But send us what ya got, and we’ll choose the most interesting ones and publish his answers this April in what is sure to be the book of all (LJ) time.

You’ve got from now until 11:59 p.m. PST on Monday, March 2, to submit your questions for Brad at lj_turns10. And for the next two weeks—as we come down the final stretch in finishing the book!—there will be new questions, polls, and quizzes for you at lj_turns10, so be sure to drop by, chime in, and join the fun.

Get Your Irish On

March is just around the corner, which means St. Patrick's Day isn't far behind. We all know what happens to people who don't wear green on March 17—save your friends' profile pages from a virtual pinch by dressing them up with a little bit o' green from the Gift Shop.

And More

As always, you can find the full scoop on the release in lj_releases.

The LJ Birthday Book

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:15:35 GMT

Thanks to your suggestions over at lj_turns10, the anniversary book is really starting to take shape. We're closing in on a rough table of contents and this is the last week for open entry suggestions. Things we're particularly interested in: entries from individual journals (it doesn't have to be your own); entries from the early years (1999–2000); and entries from the very, very recent past (i.e. 2007 and 2008).

As a thank-you for their contributions, all the authors of entries chosen for the book will receive a $20 LJ gift certificate (that's a year's worth of Paid Account time or 2 years' worth of userpic add-ons!). And in recognition of all the good ideas we've gotten from lj_turns10, we'll give you a $5 LJ gift certificate (that's 2 months' worth of Paid Account time) if you suggest an entry that makes it into the book. In cases where we receive multiple suggestions for an entry, the gift certificate goes to the first suggestion. And what if you suggest an entry that gets chosen for the book and you happen to be the author of that entry? Then we'll give you a $20 and a $5 LJ gift certificate, for a grand total of $25, to spend as you wish in the Gift Shop.

11:59 p.m. PST on February 25 is your last chance to suggest any and every excellent entry (remember that entries should be the author's original content and written in English). After the stroke of midnight, lj_turns10 will still be the hub of LJ birthday activity—we'll have polls, questions, and perhaps some writing prompts—but we won't be accepting any more entry nominations for the book. So give us your final suggestions because we can't wait to see them!

Account Settings, Birthday Fun, Happy Valentine's

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:47:44 GMT

Account Settings
lj_turns10
Valentine's Day

There's a Setting for That!

One of the great things about LJ (we think) is the level of control you have over all the different settings. One of the less great things about LJ has been that those settings are scattered all over the place, making it hard to keep track of them or even know that they exist. Back in October we organized all these settings into one central area (cleverly called Account Settings) and put it in beta. We tweaked it a bit based on your feedback and now we're releasing it out into the wide world of LJ. You can find and manage all your settings by clicking Account at the top of any page when you're logged in (it's right next to your username). You'll be amazed at all the things you can do!

Birthday Fun for Everyone

As you might have heard, LiveJournal crosses into double digits this year, age-wise, and we're celebrating with a book commemorating the first 10 years of LJ. Many of you have already paid a visit to lj_turns10, the community for all things LJ-birthday, and given us lots of great ideas for things to go in the book. To keep the suggestions rolling in, we have a new question for you this week: How has LJ changed the world? There can be a lot of crossover between your LJ and your RL, and we want to know all about it. We're looking for specific entries from journals and communities about moments when real-world events spilled over into LiveJournal and vice versa. This could be anything from an entry about how someone met their true love on LJ to entries posted in the midst of sweeping historical events like Hurricane Katrina or September 11. As always, a link to the specific entry is appreciated. Think about it and then head on over to lj_turns10 and meet us at the intersection of LJ Street and Real Life Avenue.

Some of you have been asking how this whole book thing is going to work when it comes to copyright and permissions. All your original content belongs to you and we won't (can't!) use it without your permission. When we decide which entries we want to use, we'll contact the authors and ask for permission to use their entry in the book. If we don't get permission, we won't put it in.

The Easiest Way to Say i <3 u

Ahhh Valentine's Day, the holiday that celebrates love in all its many splendors. Some people love it. Others, not so much. This year, however you feel about flowers, hearts, and chocolates, we've got you covered in the Gift Shop. A heart-shaped, lace-trimmed shipment of Valentine's v-gifts just arrived and we think there's no better way to say "I love you" (or "@#$! Valentine's Day") than with a charming arrangement of pixels sent to your friends' profile pages.

And remember, LJ <3 u!

You can get the full scoop on this week's release in lj_releases.

LJ Turns 10

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:02:22 GMT

Has it really been 10 years?

On April 11, LiveJournal celebrates its tenth birthday. In Internet time, that's ancient. We're not ready to plan our golden years just yet, but we do have a lot of plans for our tenth year. One of the most exciting projects we're working on is a book chronicling the first 10 years of LJ, and we need your help to do it. The book will highlight some of the most interesting and memorable communities, journals, and entries from over the years. The only problem is that there's just so much stuff to choose from that it's hard to narrow it down. That's where you come in. What are your top five favorite LJ entries of all time? Take a minute to think about it (or check your Memories) and then go to lj_turns10 to let us know what you think should go in the book.

lj_turns10 is the hub for all things related to LJ's tenth birthday. We'll be using the community to ask questions and source material for the book, including polls, quizzes, and other fun stuff. Your insights and suggestions into all the things that make LJ the awesome, crazy place that it is will help us shape the book into a true reflection of the great and varied LJ community. Our users (you!) are what make LJ unique, so the focus of the book is on you and your original content (and not just for—ahem—reasons involving copyright and intellectual property law). People across the world use LJ in lots of different ways and we want the book to show that, too. Of course, we won't be able to fit everything we find into just one book, so we'll also be using the community to get ideas for future projects.

Our birthday plans aren't limited to the book. Another way we're going to celebrate is by revamping the LJ Store. Everything is up for consideration and we'd love to hear your ideas about what kind of LJ schwag you'd like to see in the store. Should we bring back old favorites? Focus on new stuff? Let us know what you think.

April 11 is fast approaching, so head on over to lj_turns10 with your top five favorite entries before Time's winged chariot runs us over!

State of the Goat 2008

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:15:14 GMT

State of the Goat 2008

New Features

Paid Account Love

Policy Changes

New Partnerships

Giving Back

Just for Kicks

Controversies

Things We Didn't Get Done

Looking Ahead, Looking Back

Independent Minds

State of the Goat 2008

LJ went through a lot of changes in 2008. Here are the highlights:

New features

Server upgrade. This was the biggest change of the year, if not necessarily the most visible. We moved LJ off the SixApart servers and onto our own servers in our own brand-new data center in Montana, resulting in a faster, stronger LJ with much more storage capacity.

Poll results and comment limits got up upped. 2000 for poll results, 10,000 for comments.

Mobile LJ. TxtLJ lets you post and receive notifications via text message. The LJ App for iPhone makes it easy for iPhone users to post entries (including photos) to journals and communities. And Russian users can access almost their entire LJ on their mobile phones with the 2008 updates to ljmob.ru.

Posting features. RTE now works for Opera and Safari and there's a new icon to identify filtered posts. If you're looking for posting inspiration, try the Writer's Block Archive. For Last.fm users, the updated Music field on the Post an Entry page can now automatically fill in what you're listening to when you write the post. LJ bookmarklet lets you easily post links and articles without leaving the site where you found them.

OpenID. LJ now supports OpenID 2.0 and your OpenID friends can leave comments in journal entries that are marked as "friends only."

Sponsored Accounts. We introduced a new account structure for Russian users, adding Sponsored Accounts that have all the features of Paid Accounts but are supported by sponsors.

New themes and v-gifts. We added some new themes, including the winners of the HP "What Do You Have to Say?" Theme Design Contest and the new Minimalism layout scheme with 25 themes.

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

There were new v-gifts as well, for everything from Chinese New Year to chocolate ice cream, and some changes in the giving process. Now you can send v-gifts to more than one user at a time and view the comment you include on the checkout page.

Secret question. We added a new security measure that lets you access your account when you've forgotten your password or changed emails since you became a user—the secret question. You make up the question and the answer is the key to your account.

Account settings. We took all the various settings scattered around the site and consolidated them on a new Account Settings page. This feature is still in beta but will be making its sitewide debut soon.

<strike> vs. <b>. Back in 2007 we changed the visual display of deleted and suspended usernames from a line through the username to displaying the username in a bold font that was hard to read, confusing, and unclickable. So in 2008 we changed the display back to strikethrough and made it clickable again.

"Delete all." The private messaging inbox got a handy "Delete all" feature so you can clean out your LJ inbox with one click.

Paid Account Love
Users with Paid Accounts got some treats this year: persistent style=mine, collapsed comment thread expansion, and the very popular View Friends Page by Date feature. December saw the return of the Give More promotion and a Permanent Account sale. Permanent Account users also received an increase in userpics and storage limits.

Policy Changes
Updating and clarifying our Abuse policies as a result of events in 2007 was a major part of 2008. Among the most significant changes: Non-sexualized, non-graphic images of nudity are no longer considered to be explicit adult content; flagging content as explicit adult content does not mean the content is in violation of our Terms of Service; and the policy on removal of non-photographic images of minors was itself removed. Removal of this content is no longer required and users posting this content are no longer suspended. We also implemented the ability to suspend a single journal entry and to make a journal read-only, rather than suspending entire journals. You can read about all the policy changes and the reasoning behind them in lj_policy. The complete Abuse policy can be found here.

New Partnerships
Our global footprint got a little bigger in 2008 as we developed new partnerships in India, the UK, and Russia. Highlights included the Caferati flash fiction contest in India; us_election2008, where journalists from partner newspapers Gazeta, MINT, and The Independent posed questions to U.S. users about the presidential election; and the Independent Minds community created in collaboration with The Independent. We hope to build on these partnerships in the year ahead. To read about the latest development in our collaboration with The Independent, see below.

Giving Back
LJ continued its tradition of charitable giving in 2008. We donated proceeds from charity v-gifts to the Depression and Bipolar Alliance, PFLAG, and NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program. To support all the LJers who take part in National Novel Writing Month, we supplied the Grand Prize laptop for NaNoWriMo's Writeathon and also pledged a dollar to the Young Writers Program for every LJ user who finished NaNoWriMo (up to $1000—we gave the full thousand). We also partnered with Razoo.com so purchasers of Permanent Accounts could donate a portion of their purchase price to the charity of their choice.

Just for Kicks
We had some fun in 2008, welcoming a new team member to the Advisory Board at the beginning of April and being taken over by a horrifying new site scheme at the end of October. Also in April we warmed up our new office space in San Francisco at a little get-together with some local LJers. And while the research report had a serious purpose, we really enjoyed reading it.

Controversies
It wouldn't be LJ without some controversy, and we had a few in 2008. Many of you objected to the plan to eliminate Basic Accounts (and the way it was announced). In the end, after a lot of feedback and discussion, we restored the option for existing users to downgrade their accounts to Basic and therefore see no ads when logged in and viewing Basic journals and communities. You can read the full decision here.

And then there was the Profile page redesign. Some of you didn't like it. We went through all of your feedback and comments and made some changes. You can find the full story in lj_design.

The Advisory Board was also the cause of some controversy. The purpose and usage of the Advisory Board wasn't conveyed as well as it could have been, and the election of user representatives had its share of trouble. We'll be having user elections again in a few months and we hope to apply the lessons learned from last year to make the process much smoother this time around.

Things We Didn't Get Done
We promised a la carte userpics and didn't come through. We're sorry. We know they're important to you and they're still on our priority list. We hope to get them to you soon. Another area we're still working on is search, where we had three priorities: improving public email search (Find Your Friends); Journal search to allow you to search within your own journal; and improved site-wide search for interests, tags, and more. We made a lot of progress on Find Your Friends (have you set your preference yet?) and journal search on public entries but not to the point where they were ready to release in 2008. You should see some new search features in the next few releases.

Looking Ahead, Looking Back
LiveJournal turns 10 this year and we're looking forward to celebrating our tenth birthday with a variety of special features. But before we close the door on 2008, let's indulge in some nostalgia. What was your favorite LJ moment of the past year? Comment with your favorite moment and why you liked (or hated) it so much, and the Paid Account fairy just might pay you a visit! We'll be awarding two months of Paid Account time to the best comments on the hits (or misses) of 2008.

And now it's full steam ahead into 2009!

Independent Commenting Powered by LiveJournal

Back in November we announced the launch of Independent Minds, our partnership with The Independent newspaper in the UK. Today we're happy to announce the latest development in the partnership—LiveJournal is the power behind The Independent's new commenting system. Now you can comment on articles on The Independent using your LJ account. This is the first time a newspaper has integrated LJ into their platform for commenting, journalist blogs, and editorial communities, and we're pretty excited about it. You can see it all and get the details at Independent Minds.

Changes at LJ HQ

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:55:17 GMT

As has been reported, we had staff cuts at LiveJournal Inc. this week. Early media reports seriously exaggerated the impact of the decision on the continued existence of LiveJournal as a company and misrepresented the scope of the staff cuts. The cuts were part of a restructuring that shifted global design and product development to the LiveJournal office in Moscow. Product decisions for the English-language site will still be made in the U.S., and LiveJournal Inc. remains headquartered in San Francisco. You can read more about the reasoning behind the restructuring here.

The restructuring is done with an eye to the future to ensure the long-term viability of LiveJournal as a business. As a team, we know that LJ has a great future as it prepares for its second decade. We recently invested a considerable amount on all-new server equipment and a facility in Montana to house it all as part of our commitment to the longevity of LJ. We will be around for years to come and we're committed to ensuring that your journals, friends pages, and communities will be, too.

As with any of these kinds of decisions, it's always hardest to lose valued team members. We're very sad to see our colleagues go and want to acknowledge all the hard work, dedication, and love they've given LiveJournal over the years. They will be missed. While they are no longer a part of LiveJournal Inc., they are still a part of the LJ community.

Bookmarklet, Profile Page, Give More, V-Gifts, Research Report, Paid Account Feature, Happy Holidays

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:46:20 GMT

LJ Bookmarklet—a new feature that lets you post links and articles without leaving the site where you find them

Profile Page Update—a new version of the Profile page goes live today

Give More—there's still time to Give More

Holiday V-Gifts—Seasonal v-gifts in the Gift Shop

LJ Research Report—a new report highlights the uniqueness of LJ and its users

New Paid Account Feature—view Friends page by date

Happy Holidays!—good tidings from the LJ staff

New Bookmarklet Feature

You know how sometimes you find stuff online that you want to share in your journal, but the effort involved, like opening a new tab or cutting and pasting, seems like too much of a hassle? LJ bookmarklet is a handy new application that lets you share web content in your journal without having to leave the site where you found it. All you have to do is add LJ bookmarklet to your Bookmarks list. When you find a link or article that you want to share, choose LJ bookmarklet and a pop-up update.bml form appears. The entry body will include the text or link that you want to share; you can add your own commentary or simply post the link. That's it. You can find the code for LJ bookmarklet here.

Profile Page Update

As you're all aware, we rolled out a redesign of the Profile page several weeks ago. We reviewed and considered all your comments and feedback about the page and made some changes. A new version of the Profile page goes live today. Check out lj_design for the details.

Give More

If you've left gift shopping for your LJ friends to the last minute, we have the perfect way to Give More. For the month of December, any gift of Paid Account time gets an automatic userpic add-on. So, if you give a friend 12 months of Paid Account time, that friend is automatically upgraded to 100 userpics for those 12 months.

It's the season for giving, and the Give More offer applies only to gifts purchased for other users, not to paid time you purchase for yourself. Give More ends December 31 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Holiday V-Gifts

Brighten up your Friends' holidays with some seasonal v-gifts from the Gift Shop.

LJ Research Report

We've always known that LiveJournal and its users are unique. Sometimes, however, it can be hard to explain what makes LJ different to people who don't already know and love the site as we do. We're happy to announce that we've been working with a researcher (LJ user alice_marwick) to help us articulate the differences. She just completed her first report, "Discuss Amongst Yourselves," and we thought it was pretty interesting. We think you might find it interesting, too, so we wanted to share it with you before we show it to the rest of the world. You can download a PDF of the report on our corporate site. Alice is looking for feedback about the report, so when you're done reading, you can comment on it in her post on lj_research.

New Paid Account Feature

If you have a Paid Account, you can now view your Friends Page by date. To do this, just append the date you want to see to the end of the Friends Page URL, like this: /friends/?date=YYYY-MM-DD. For more details, please see paidmembers.

Happy Holidays!

This is our last news post for the year. Before we close out 2008, we want to take a moment to recognize all the hard work and dedication of the LJ volunteers and staff who do so much to keep LiveJournal the awesome and unique place that it is. THANK YOU. We'll be back in the New Year with the State of the Goat. Until then, we wish you very happy and safe holidays!

The staff of the LJ U.S. office volunteering at Project Homeless Connect on December 3.

News Flash---Permanent Account Sale Extended

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:18:39 GMT

Due to popular demand, we're extending the Permanent Account sale. Many of you have written in requesting an extension, noting that a lot of people get paid on Fridays or on the 15th. We're happy to report that your requests have been answered—the sale now ends on December 15, giving you an extra 5 days to head over to the Gift Shop and purchase a Permanent Account.

(We disabled email notification for this news post because we don't want to inundate your inboxes with announcements, but we thought you might want to know about the sale extension.)

Permanent Account Sale, Give More, india_politics, Global Viewpoints, NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, Themes

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:47:05 GMT

In this issue of LJ News:

Permanent Account Sale
Give More
india_politics
Global Viewpoints Community
NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up
NaBloPoMo Update
New Journal Themes

Get More: Permanent Account Sale Starts Today

It's here—the Permanent Account sale for personal journals starts today. For $175, you can have LJ for life. What do you get for $175?

All the cool features of a Paid Account
15GB of storage, the most available on LJ (if you already have a Permanent Account, your storage just got upped to 15GB as of today)
Oodles of userpics: 150 plus the maximum number of Loyalty Userpics. That's the most userpics available on LJ (and yes, if you already have a Permanent Account, you just got more userpics, too).
$25 of your purchase price donated to charity. Here's how it works: You purchase a Permanent Account between now and December 6, 12:00 p.m. PST. When you go through the payment process for the Permanent Account, we'll send you an email confirming your Permanent Account status. When the sale ends, we'll send each new Permanent Account holder a link to our charity partner site, razoo.com, where you'll be able to allocate your $25 donation to any of 1.6 million charities. In the future, we plan on further integrations with Razoo.com to make this process a bit less cumbersome, but we know you wanted more control over where your charity money goes, rather than having us choose for you. So, take a look at the razoo.com site and decide on the charity of your choice!

The Permanent Account sale is like a rare and exotic bird—it's seldom sighted and doesn't stay for long when it makes an appearance. The Permanent Account sale flies away on December 10 at 11:59 p.m. PST. So grab your binoculars and get out your life list (and your wallet), because who knows when you'll see it again? Head on over to the Gift Shop and get your Permanent Account today.

Give More

Oh ho ho ho, December is here and so is the Give More sale. Wondering what to get that LJ friend on your gift list? Nothing says friendship like Paid Account time, especially when it comes with a free userpic add-on. For the month of December, any gift of Paid Account time gets an automatic userpic add-on. For example, if you give a friend 12 months of Paid Account time, that friend is automatically upgraded to 100 userpics for those 12 months.

We all know it's better to give than to receive. The Give More offer applies only to gifts purchased for other users, not to paid time you purchase for yourself. Give More ends December 31 at 11:59 p.m. PST. There's never a line at the Gift Shop, so now's the time to give a Friend the gift that gives more.

india_politics

Politics in India are always volatile, and never more so than in the last few weeks. You can get Indian viewpoints on subcontinent politics at our new partner community india_politics, where community members debate the issues and share their reactions to the latest developments in Indian politics. The focus is on India and the Indian perspective, but all are welcome to join and enter the discussion.

New Global Viewpoints Community

Building on the international dialogue created in our us_election2008 community, where journalists from international newspapers posted questions to LJ users about the U.S. elections, we're taking the discussion to the global level. Journalists from newspapers such as Mint, The Independent, and Gazeta want to hear your thoughts and opinions on international events, from the recent terror attacks in Mumbai to the battle between Labour and the Tories in the U.K. The goal is to encourage lively and spirited debate between LJers and news providers worldwide and also to allow re-publication of comments from this community in print and online media outside of LJ. LiveJournal has a global user base and we want to facilitate cross-border communication and debate on news and events from all over the globe. We live in times in which it's hard not to have an opinion, so let yours be heard at global_view.

NaNoWriMo Comes to an End

Congratulations to all the hardworking LJ novelists who cranked out so many words in the month of November! We promised to give NaNoWriMo's Young Writer's Program $1 for every LJer who completed NaNoWriMo this year (up to $1000) and in recognition of all the crazy plot ninjas, narrative dead-ends, and desperate word count–padding strategies, we've decided to dispense with the counting and give YWP the full $1000.

We also dangled some other incentives in front of hungry novelists, including giving free one-year Paid Accounts to five randomly selected LJers who finished. And the winners are . . . cieria (131,045 words!), oneworldvision (50,116 words!), gnorph (50,048 words!), rintaran (51,615 words!), and nysidra (50,252 words!).

What about all those v-gifts, you might be thinking. We pledged 50% of the proceeds from v-gifts in the encouragement category in the month of November. Our accounting monkeys are still adding up the total, so check the next news post to find out just how encouraging you were in November.

And how did the LJ staffers fare? lyndaellen clocked in at 50,474 and coffeechica, despite a long and painful month involving migraines, codeine, and other trials, finished with 37,520 (many of those written in a heroic, down-to-the-wire effort during the closing days of November).

Thanks for everyone's enthusiasm and support for their fellow novelists. We hope to see you again next November.

NaBloPoMo

Also chaining people to their keyboards in November was National Blog Posting Month. Two brave LJ staffers pldeged to write 30 posts in 30 days. So how'd they do? chasethestars made a daily habit out of updating and marta posted more than she ever has before.

New Themes

The new Minimalism layout scheme has 25 new themes, including (from left to right): Aquatic Moon, Crazy Day, Dark Wood, and Deep Ocean.

Special Edition News Post, Part 2

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:04:46 GMT

Independent Minds at LiveJournal

We're very pleased to announce that our global footprint just got a little bigger with the launch of Independent Minds, our new partnership with The Independent, one of the UK's leading newspapers. At Independent Minds you can find original journals from the reporters at The Independent, where they discuss their stories, share behind-the-scenes insights, and engage directly with Independent readers and LJ users. Have an opinion about a story? Now you can comment about it directly on the journalist's journal. You can read what The Independent has to say about this new partnership here.

This marks our first attempt to engage on the ground in the UK. In addition to Independent Minds, we have launched lj_uk, a new official community to hear directly from the thousands of LJers in the UK. Our partnership with The Independent is our main area of focus now and we'll have more features to add soon. We look forward to hearing from you about other ideas and suggestions you might have for enhancing LJ in the UK.

Changes to the LiveJournal Privacy Policy

We're amending our Privacy Policy to catch up to our current practices regarding third-party advertising, cookies, and web beacons (including HitBox). Please see this post in lj_biz for a full description of the changes.

Permanent Account Sale

As we mentioned in the last news post, the Permanent Account Sale starts on December 4. For this go-round, the sale applies to personal journals only. For just $175, you can have LJ for life. What's included in $175? All the features of a Paid Account, plus:

The most storage available on LiveJournal (now a whopping 15GB)
The most userpics available on LJ (boosted to 150, and that's not even counting Loyalty Userpics, which can add up to another 44 to your 150)
EDIT: Once the sale begins on December 4, the userpic and storage limits will be increased for all Permanent Accounts.
$25 of your purchase price donated to charity (look for details about the designated organizations in the December 4 news post).

The Permanent Account Sale is a temporary offer and ends December 10 at 11:59 PST, so be ready to buy when the sale starts on December 4!

Give More Returns

December is almost here, which can only mean one thing—the Give More sale is back! For the month of December, when you give someone a gift of Paid Account time, they'll get the userpic add-on for free! So if, for example, you were a very kind and generous person and gave someone the gift of a 12-month Paid Account, that lucky person would automatically be upgraded to 100 userpics for those 12 months.

Give More starts on December 1 at 12:00 a.m. PST and ends December 31 at 11:59 p.m. PST. The offer only applies to gifts purchased for other users, not to paid time you purchase for yourself. 'Tis the season of giving, after all. Why not give a Friend the gift that gives more?

Head on over to the Gift Shop and get your holiday shopping done early!

And the Laptop Goes to . . .

Congratulations to Tupelo Hassman, winner of the Grand Prize LiveJournal Laptop at the NaNoWriMo Write-a-thon. Tupelo raised over $3000 for NaNo's Young Writers Program and took home a beautiful ruby red Dell Studio laptop to match her lovely red dress. Yay, Tupelo!

All Moved In

The move is over! LJ is happily settled at our new homestead in Montana and we have almost all the bits and bytes unpacked and in their proper places. Congratulations to our awesome Ops team and all the engineers for a job well done. We hope you notice a marked improvement in performance on the site. Here are some recent metrics that show the effects of the move:

The percentage of people seeing the page load in less than 2 seconds increased from 8.58% to 12.53% (a 46% improvement!)

The percentage of people seeing the page load in 2 to 8 seconds increased from 66.75% to 72.33% (an 8% improvement!)

These measurements are global averages for full page loads. Points farthest from the continental U.S. (where the servers are), like Japan and Australia, experience longer load times than points that are closer. Thanks for all your patience during the move. We think LJ is going to be very happy in its new home.

IP Address Update

In last week's Special Edition News Post, we told you to update your whitelist with two new IP addresses for LiveJournal, so comments notifications and LJ mail could keep making it to your email inbox. One of them, ahem, was missing an important digit in the address. The two IP addresses should be 208.93.0.128 and 208.93.0.50. We apologize for the mistake. It seems Frank was nibbling on the piece of paper that had the addresses on it.

Notifications

There's another reason you might not be receiving notifications from LJ. Due to the volume of mail that LiveJournal sends out, a few ISPs responded to our change of address by blacklisting our servers. We've been working with them to restore mail delivery for our users. Currently, the main problem still being reported is delivery to Hotmail/MSN addresses, and they have agreed to whitelist us in the next 24 hours or so. Other users might also be experiencing a delay due to our backlog in delivering to Hotmail, and that should also clear up in the next 24 to 48 hours.

The Atom Stream Has Moved

As a result of the server move, our Atom stream is moving. If you know what "Atom stream" means, then you'll probably want to know the new address. The URL for the new Atom stream is: http://atom.services.livejournal.com/atom-stream.xml. For more information about the Atom stream move, check out this post in lj_labs.

LJ News Special Edition: Server Move, Permanent Account Sale Update, A La Carte Userpics

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:44:00 GMT

Welcome to a Very Special Edition of LJ News.

Moving Day and What It Means for You

Moving What Where?

The long-awaited server move takes place this Tuesday, November 18, at 8:00 a.m. PST. We're moving the site from servers based in San Francisco to the servers in our new data center in Montana. A massive data move like this takes a lot of heavy lifting, and to haul all that data from San Francisco to Montana, we have to take the site down, starting at 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning. We don't think the move will take more than four hours, but there's always the possibility that it could take longer (the best laid plans and all).

What Does This Mean for You?

During the downtime, nothing on LJ will be available—no posting, no Friends page, no LJ mail, nada. When we bring the site back up, we're going to ease into it rather than open up a floodgate of traffic. Posting might not be immediately available or the site could be slow to load for a while.

New servers mean new IP addresses, so it's possible that LJ mail might not reach your email inbox because your email provider or client doesn't recognize the new IP addresses. We're working with email providers to whitelist the new IPs. There are a few things you can do on your end:

Add these two IP addresses to your "allowed senders" list (or whitelist) and address book in your email client: 208.93.0.18 and 208.93.0.50. These are the new IPs for sending comments notifications and LJ mail to your email inbox.

Add lj_notify@livejournal.com and webmaster@livejournal.com to your email address book.

If you can't edit the spam or junk filters in your email client, you may need to disable them entirely. Make these changes just before 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning or shortly after the site comes back up to ensure that your LJ mail makes it to your inbox.

Those of you who use domain aliasing to forward your domain to your LiveJournal will need to create a CNAME record that maps to livejournal.com. Please note that we're no longer supporting the A record. For more information, check the domain forwarding FAQ.

Before the move, you can check lj_maintenance for complete details about the planned downtime. During the move, you can check status.livejournal.org for updates about the site's status.

Permanent Account Sale Delayed

We regret to inform you that due to the server move, the Permanent Account sale has been pushed back to December 4, rather than November 20 as announced in the last news post. After the virtual dust has settled from the move, we'll be able to turn our attention to the Permanent Account sale. Except for the start date, the details remain the same: You have a limited opportunity to purchase LJ for life for only $175. It's a bummer to delay the sale, but on the bright side, you have more time to save up.

But What About A La Carte Userpics?

We know we promised more information about a la carte userpics, and we're sorry that details have not been forthcoming (blame it on the move). We're still planning on having a la carte userpics, but we don’t have any details yet. When the move is over, we'll have more information. We're sorry for the delay.

Find Your Friends Setting, Permanent Account Sale, Profile Page, Montana, Search Update, and More

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:35:11 GMT

Find Your Friends, Now with Dialog Box

We wanted to give you an update about the Find Your Friends feature we talked about recently in news and feedback. Based on your feedback, the opt-in implementation has an overwhelming mandate from the people. So that's the method we're going to use. Before we launch this feature, we need you to set your preference for the setting. The next time you visit the LiveJournal homepage, you'll see a dialog box that prompts you to set your preference for whether you want your email address to be searchable by the new Find Your Friends feature. If you have more than one account, the dialog box will appear the first time you visit each account's homepage.

The Find Your Friends feature will be launching in the weeks to come.

Permanent Account Sale Coming Soon

It's almost here—the Permanent Account sale! For a limited time only, you can purchase a Permanent Account for only $175. Your chance to get LiveJournal for life starts on November 20. Check out the benefits:

All the cool features offered to Paid Accounts

The highest amount of storage available on LJ (currently 10GB, but we think there might be room to grow in there)

No ads in your journal and, as long as you're logged in, you won't see ads anywhere on LiveJournal

The most userpics available on LJ (currently 144 and increasing all the time with our Loyalty Userpics program)

$25 of your purchase price donated to charity (look for details about the chosen organizations in the next news post)

The peace of mind that comes with never having to make another payment

We've been talking about this sale for a while now, so hopefully you've had some time to save up for it. Remember, the Permanent Account sale is very temporary. We don't want anyone to miss out, so tell all your friends that the sale starts November 20 and ends November 26. After that you'll have to wait at least another year for your chance to buy a Permanent Account.

When you purchase a Permanent Account, you can gift a friend with any balance of paid time or extra userpics you might have. Look for more details in the next news post, and keep an eye on the Gift Shop to buy your Permanent Account as soon as they go on sale!

Profile Page Goes Live

The redesigned Profile page is graduating from beta and going out into the wider world of LiveJournal. The design team put hundreds of hours into this redesign, with a marathon three rounds of beta testing. We considered every comment and critique that came through feedback and worked hard to incorporate as much user input as possible. We think the profile page is much improved and ready to go live.

Thank you to all the beta testers for your hard work and feedback. We couldn't have done it without you (no, really).

Montana-Bound

By the time you read the next release, a shinier, faster, better LJ will be up and running on the servers at our brand-new data center in Montana. The ops team is hard at work packing up bits and bytes here and unpacking them in Montana. The new servers and data center are an investment in LJ's future; they also offer more immediate benefits, such as room for more userpics, improved energy efficiency, and, of course, cool new servers. Check lj_maintenance for news and announcements concerning the move. If there's any downtime during the move, exact dates and times will be posted there. And you can always check status.livejournal.org, our offsite status page.

Unpacking is the hardest part of moving.

Watch This Space

Back in our lj_2008 update, we mentioned that we were going to start increasing our local partnerships in India and elsewhere. Like india_sport, for example. Building on those experiences, we've been hard at work expanding our global footprint with a new partnership with one of the leading newspapers in the United Kingdom. So watch this space in the next release for an exciting announcement!

Search Update

So, Find Your Friends is almost ready to go (you can choose your setting now, before the feature goes live, as noted above). But, as talked about in the lj_2008 update, our goals for improving search included two other projects. Where do they stand?

Search for public posts and comments: We're making great progress on developing a search engine for public posts and comments, which will include tags and interests.

Journal search: We've been so hard at work on the other two search projects that Journal search for Paid users to search within their own journals isn't going to make it to the finish line in 2008. We're still working on it, although it has turned out to be a bit more complicated than we originally thought.

Word Counts and Daily Posts

As of last Saturday, furiously clattering keyboards can be heard echoing around the globe. NaNoWriMo is off to a roaring start—word count updates are flooding the NaNo servers, main characters are refusing to cooperate, and world coffee prices are skyrocketing due to demand. We had an overwhelming response to lj_nanowrimo (and the overflowing email inbox to prove it), and we're all (except for our accountant) really rooting for you to finish those novels. And for those of you who are busy crafting daily blog posts for NaBloPoMo, keep it up! We know you can do it.

OpenID 2.0 Now Supported

In the last release, we upgraded our OpenID client support to include OpenID 2.0. So if you're a user with an OpenID 2.0 account (like Yahoo, for example), you can use that ID to log in to LiveJournal.

And More

You can find all the details of this week's release at lj_releases.

Downtime, Account Settings, iPhone, NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, Permanent Account Sale Update, Halloween

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:11:31 GMT

A Little Downtime

As you might know, LiveJournal still runs on the Six Apart servers. 6A is taking a little downtime for maintenance, which means so are we. You won't be able to access the site on October 29th ~~from 9:00 p.m. to midnight PST~~ Edit: 8:30PM to 12:30AM (October 30) PST.

But the good news is that our upcoming server move means we won't have to schedule downtime for maintenance in the future (Edit: after the move, that is). In mid-November, we're moving to a completely new server facility in Montana that will make LiveJournal bigger, faster, better, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Housed in a brand-new data center, the new servers are more efficient and increase the overall capacity of the site. The new location also offers increased roaming capacity for Frank.

Account Settings Page

In our neverending quest to make LiveJournal a more friendly place to visit, we are introducing a new Account Settings page.

We took all the various "settings" scattered and hidden throughout LJ and exposed them to the light. This project is in phase one, so it's only in beta for now. Go to lj_design to read more about the new settings page and find out how to test it. In phase two we'll take all of your comments, discuss them internally and on lj_design, then incorporate the discussion into our thinking and put the Account Settings page up again in what we hope will be an even easier-to-use design. And while you're over at lj_design, take a look at the revamped Profile Page beta. We're really looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

It's Here! LiveJournal App for iPhone

The LiveJournal.app is available in the App Store on iTunes. Now you can use your iPhone or iPod touch to keep up with LiveJournal when you're on the go. Post entries to journals and communities, select userpics and security settings for individual posts, upload photos, use familiar LJ formatting commands like <lj-cut> and <lj user>, and more. Read the FAQ here. And be sure to check out cosysoftware_en, the Cosy Software developer community, to give feedback and get news about upcoming features.

National Novel Writing Month Is Coming

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), your annual chance to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, starts on November 1. We know NaNoWriMo is very popular with LJ users, and we also know the key to finishing is having the right kind of support. Together with our friends at NaNoWriMo we've come up with a number of ways to help you get across the 50,000-word finish line.

Doing something for others can be a great motivator, so for every LiveJournal user who finishes the contest this year, we'll donate a $1 to NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program. We partnered wth NaNoWriMo and created lj_nanowrimo to keep track of who's participating and who finishes. All you have to do is join and let us know your NaNo username or number, and at the end of the month we'll check our list against the list of verified finishers.

If you're more motivated by personal gain than altruism (and really, who isn't?), we have something for you, too. We're giving away 5 free one-year paid accounts to a random selection of LJ users who join lj_nanowrimo and finish NaNoWriMo.

Want to offer your support to friends who are writing madly to meet the deadline? Encourage them with a special v-gift and we'll donate 50% of the net proceeds to the Young Writer's Program.

It takes more than coffee to write a novel in 30 days. One of our writing-themed templates might be just the thing to keep you going late at night.

LJ staffers coffeechica and lyndaellen are taking the plunge this year and you can track their progress in lj_nanowrimo (we hear that fear of public failure is a great motivator).

And, as part of NaNoWriMo's Write-a-thon fundraiser on November 15, we're sponsoring what we think is the grandest of the Grand Prizes—the LiveJournal Laptop! The top fundraiser of the night will walk away with a brand-new Dell Studio 15 laptop all pimped out LJ-style.

You can get all the details about LiveJournal's involvement with NaNoWriMo at lj_nanowrimo.

Don't Forget National Blog Posting Month

For those of you who feel a little daunted by 50,000 words in 30 days, why not try 30 blog posts in 30 days? If you want to make blogging a daily habit, sign up for NaBloPoMo to kick your posts into high gear. LJ staffers chasethestars and marta took the pledge, so check their journals during November to make sure their posts are on track (see above about fear of public failure being a great motivator).

Permanent Account Sale and A La Carte Userpics Update

So, we said we would know the details about the a la carte userpics and Permanent Account sale by October, but due to various product priorities being juggled in the last month, we have to delay that announcement until November 6. We're sorry for the six-day delay, but rest assured that we're working furiously to get it all lined up because we know it's important to you.

Happy Halloween!

It's the spookiest time of year. Treat (or trick) a friend with one of our haunting Halloween v-gifts. And keep your eyes out next week for a horrifying new site scheme.

last.fm, Increased Limits, Feedback Request, and India Travels

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:04:21 GMT

Last.fm in Journal Entries

Are you a last.fm user? The updated Music field on the Post an Entry page can now automatically fill in what you're listening to when you write the post. To enable this feature, fill in your last.fm username in the field under Contact Info on the Edit Profile page. This also adds a link to your last.fm profile on your LiveJournal Profile page. Then download the scrobbler client from last.fm. When it's installed, just click the Detect button by the Music field on the Post an Entry page and the scrobbler automatically pulls through the track information of what you're listening to on your music player or music program.

You can also use the feature without downloading the scrobbler client. If you're logged in and listening to last.fm over the Internet, click Detect to pull through the artist and title of the track playing. If the song changes while you're writing your entry, just click Detect again to update the Music field.

And for more musical accompaniment, last.fm also has a widget you can embed in your profile or a journal entry that displays what you're listening to in real time.

Increased Limits for Poll Results and Comments

Back in August we promised an increase in limits for poll results and comments. And now they're here. You can now view more than 2000 votes in the detailed view of poll results, and the limit for comments allowed for a post has been raised to 10,000, up from 5000. After the first 5000 comments, every comment will require a CAPTCHA.

Feedback Request on New Find Your Friends Feature

We're working on an optional feature that will make it easier for you to find out if existing friends in your web-based email contacts are LJ users. Once you find them, you'll be able to quickly add their journals to your Friends page. We know your privacy is very important to you, so we're interested in getting your feedback about this new feature. A full description, including the proposed privacy settings, is available in feedback. Let us know what you think.

India Travels Community

Have you explored the subcontinent? From the heights of the Himalayas to the beaches of Kerala, India is so vast and varied that you'll discover something new wherever you go, no matter how many people have been there before. We've partnered with travel writer Ajay Jain of Kunzum to create a community where you can share your stories, anecdotes, and tips about traveling in India. What was the most amazing thing you saw? Where did you go that can't be found with a Google search? Where do you want to go next? Selected entries will be considered for publication (with full credit, and only if you give permission) in travel books about India. So whether you've been to India, want to go to India, or aspire to write about India, you should take a trip over to india_travels.

And More

There's lots of other stuff going on, too. See lj_releases to get all the details.

US Elections, style=mine, beta profile, Snap, and Bollywood

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:35:58 GMT

U.S. Presidential Election Community

With a historic U.S. election coming down to the wire, causing a lot of buzz in the U.S. and abroad, we thought it would be cool to create a community with a global view on the 2008 election. To that end, we've partnered with various news providers, including The Independent in the UK, Gazeta in Russia, and Mint in India, to allow their journalists to engage with the LiveJournal user community, asking questions and posting news stories for comments and discussion. Our goal is to encourage a lively and spirited debate between users and news providers worldwide on LiveJournal itself, and also to allow republication of user comments from within this community in print and online media outside of LiveJournal. In this way we hope to facilitate cross-border public discussion of the issues and personalities involved to provide a better understanding of the internal political debates here in the U.S. as well as the international perspective of the U.S. election. Whether your views swing red, blue, purple, or neutral, come check out us_election2008 and let your opinions be heard.

Persistent style=mine for Paid Users

Many of you know that you can add the parameter ?style=mine to a journal URL in order to view that journal in your own journal's style. In the spirit of giving users more of what they've been asking for, we're giving our users with Paid Accounts a persistent style=mine option. If you want to override other journals' styles with your own all of the time, just turn on the "View all journals and communities in your own style" setting at the Viewing Options page. This will make it so every journal you view will always be shown in your own style. In addition, you can use the navigation strip at the top of most journals to quickly toggle between the journal's original style and your own style. Head over to paidmembers for more information on this new feature. Speaking of paid accounts . . . .

Paid Account Sale Ending Soon

One minute before the stroke of midnight on September 30th (11:59 p.m. PDT on 9/30/2008, to be exact), our paid account sale comes to an end. Act now to get 20% off the purchase of a 12-month block of paid account time. Check out our paid account sale page for details. In addition, we wanted to remind everyone about the permanent account sale, coming in November: stay tuned for more information on pricing and other details.

New Profile Page in Beta

We have long wanted to make the profile page easier to navigate, so we have committed our best thoughts to paper (or .pdf) and put the redesigned profile page into Beta. If you want to participate in beta testing for the profile page, go here. The design team has been hard at work incorporating a lot of feedback from the folks over at lj_design into the process, reorganizing information to make it easier to scan and process. This is just the start of the conversation with our users about how to improve the profile page, and we encourage your feedback over on the lj_design post. Our goal is to continue the evolution of the profile page to best suit user needs.

Snap Implementation Changes

We're changing the "Enable graphic previews" setting on the Viewing Options page from a journal setting (whether or not other people see it on your journal) to a user setting (whether or not you see it site-wide). You do not need to make any changes to your settings—whatever you had selected as a journal setting will be used as your new viewing option. For logged-out viewers of your journal, your viewing option will determine whether or not Snap is shown.

Idea Bollywood Club Community

Some people dream of being famous in Hollywood, the so-called Motion Picture Capital of the World, but across the globe in Mumbai there is another dream factory—Bollywood. LiveJournal has partnered with Zoom TV to present a behind-the-scenes look at Idea Bollywood Club, an American Idol-esque show with an Indian twist. If you're keen to find out more about the show's contestants, or want to show your support for your favorites, head on over to bollywoodclub and make yourself heard. All next week the show will be live-blogged, providing an extra bit of insight into the running of the show.