Release 86, Earthquake relief, Halloween events, Tim Daly interview: news

October 27th, 2011 - Happy Halloween and welcome to the official newsletter for all things LiveJournal! Bringing you information about system updates, community events, LJ social outreach, and other newsworthy nuggets from the world of LiveJournal. A quick note before we jump in: we've posted an update at

lj_maintenance outlining a service issue that sprung up a couple days ago and was quickly resolved.

Release 86

While 'Release 86' sounds like a great name for a horror film from the early 80s, it's actually our recent system update. New additions / changes are brief. Here's the rundown:

Community owners can now make use of the Google Analytics feature for their community. This feature is activated on the Extensions tab of the Settings dialog.
The contextual hover menu has been redesigned. Roll your mouse over a friend's or community's userhead/userpic to see the new hover menu in action.

Check out

lj_releases for all the details regarding Release 86.

Earthquake relief in Turkey

'Help Turkey' vGift

On October 23rd, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the eastern province of Van in Turkey. Hundreds have been killed and over a thousand injured as an estimated 2,000 buildings collapsed during the tremor.

LJ has created a 'Help Turkey' vGift to support the recovery efforts in the region. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the vGift will go towards aiding the recovery efforts in Turkey.

Halloween @ LJ

A tradition unlike any other

To celebrate Halloween and show appreciation for our Facebook fans, we're hosting a LJ Token giveaway! Check out our Facebook page for more details!
LJ's Pumpkin Carvageddon! Share your creative carving tricks for a chance to win some musical treats!
ohnotheydidnt's costume contest has returned! Click away to dig up the dirty details!
lj_scribe will be hosting a special contest on LJ's Twitter next week.
lj_photophile is celebrating Halloween by hosting a themed photo contest. Submit your spookiest, funniest and most creative Halloween pics here!
Spice up your profile with Halloween-themed Custom Userheads!
Send your friends ghoulish Halloween vGifts!

Eight reasons to love Halloween

The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout and onto your friend's LJ profile! If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send eight spiders now until Monday, October 31st, at midnight, PDT! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 vGifts displayed until you've sent them to your friends. If you're not receiving vGifts then you may have disabled them. To enable vGifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and check your settings. Make sure the box beside 'Disable sponsored only' is NOT checked! Enjoy!

The LJ Interview: Tim Daly speaks about arts advocacy and bullying

During the interview, Tim Daly talks about the bullying issue, his role in The Creative Coalition, and his passion for rallying creative professionals around important social issues. Stay tuned, later in the week we'll have an interview in

bullying_begone with WWE wrestler Sheamus about his career and how bullying influenced his life.

LJ news and you

We've been experimenting with various formats for presenting the news over the last couple months, In the near future, we'll be shifting news to a fixed-width (most likely 600px wide), newsletter-style entry. We realize this doesn't work for everyone. As an alternative, we've got a few ways to keep up with LiveJournal.

news: You're here! Your spot for all topics regarding LiveJournal's operations and social outreach.
simplynews: A text-only, lightly formatted simulcast of news. Worth a look if you view the news in a highly-customized journal style.
lj_today: A new community we've started for announcing site updates as well as promoting upcoming events in active communities.
lj_maintenance and lj_releases: Two communities focused on announcing new features and site performance issues.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month 2011 is right around the corner. Rally together, brave writers, and meet up at

lj_nanowrimo! Find support among your literary colleagues and we'll try to ease the writing experience with a couple surprises of our own. Good hunting, writers!

For news about LJ_Scribe and LJ_Photophile and recent contest winners, we'll see you under the cut!

Photo of the week

Congrats to

snorkel_maiden, winner of our 87th

lj_photophile contest!

FYI: We pick entries for the poll based on a combination of comments, +1 ratings, and staff input. The winner receives 500 LJ tokens. We thank you for sharing your talent with the global LiveJournal community.

Welcome back, dear scribes!

Congratulations to

canvasedtime,

darkhavens, and

ellenemi, who won prompt #35 of our

lj_scribe writing contest! We've selected 6 finalists in response to our 36th prompt theme for your review.

Recent contests