LiveJournal (LJ, LiveJournal)

Performance Indicators

• From January to August, 2011 the monthly number of unique users of world LJ decreased by 8.2 million up to 27.7 million (-23%), and Russian — by 2.8 million up to 8.6 million (-25%), follows from materials of ComScore. Decrease in monthly audience of LJ during the same period fixes also TNS Media Research: in the world — on 3.4 million up to 26.5 million (-11%, here TNS refers to the Unique Visitors counter), in Russia — on 3.9 million up to 10.9 million (-26%)^[1].

Falling of attendance of LJ is caused by set of the reasons, Anton Nosik, the former head of service of the blogs SUP Fabrik considers (this company owns LJ). On the one hand, because of two DDoS attacks this year LJ did not work so much how many did not stand idle for all years of the existence, and even several hours of idle time cardinally change the schedule of life of bloggers and their readers, he says. Other reason — the growing popularity of social networks: Google+ develops, Facebook which give to users more opportunities for communication and self-expression improves, are better adapted for work with mobile devices, Nosik notes.

Recession was temporary and only during the attacks — even the top bloggers announcing the leaving remained in LiveJournal, the head of LiveJournal Russia Svetlana Ivannikova parries. "The audience of LiveJournal considerably grew for the last three years, annual average growth is 40%. Traditionally at the majority of the websites of Runet during the summer period attendance recession is observed, and in this case it is more correct to look at dynamics in comparison with similar months of last year" — she considers.

But data of TNS show that in 2010 in January — August summer recession ate off from LJ in the world only 0.5 million audience (about 2%), and in Russia it grew at all — by the same 0.5 million (4%). So the seasonality in this case explains the little.

Besides, specifies Ivannikov, reports of TNS do not include mobile traffic, and it at LiveJournal in a year grew by 70%. But it does not give absolute numbers of mobile traffic.

• Demyan Kudryavtsev, the CEO of Kommersant did not open financial performance of Livejournal.com, having noted that the project is profitable.

It surprises the top manager of one of the Internet companies. Only staff expenses of SUP can make about $6 million, and Livejoural.com in itself hardly collects advertizing more than for $3 million a year, he assumes.

Participants of the advertizing Internet market find it difficult to estimate how many earns LiveJournal from advertizing in blogs. It is obvious that with reduction of audience also interest in LJ of advertisers will decrease, the CEO of IContext advertizing agency Maria Chernitskaya argues. But while attendance of LiveJournal is rather high also platforms with such indicators very little in Runet, she notes. In this or that type advertizing will be present at LJ even at more serious reduction of audience, Chernitskaya assumes.

History

• On March 18, 1999 the American programmer Brad Fitspatrik (Fitzpatrick) — LJ-avtorbrad started LiveJournal.com service

• On January 5, 2005 the Six Apart company making the software for blogs purchased Danga Interactive — the LiveJournal management company belonging to Fitzpatrick.

• On December 3, 2007 the Six Apart company sold service of the SUP company since October, 2006 servicing the Cyrillic segment. Shareholders of SUP Fabrik were Alexander Mamut and Andrew Paulson.

Then experts estimated the transaction at $30 million.

• In 2008 structures of the entrepreneur Alisher Usmanov became the co-owner of SUP.

• On July 20, 2010 "cleaning" of the frozen magazines as a result of which it was going to delete together with comments 2 million magazines is begun. Rules according to which inactive more than 2 years magazines will subject to cleaning too are also introduced, but external comments of magazines in this case will not be removed. These magazines could already become history. In the same time sale of inactive accounts began (such opportunity existed long ago, but now SUP "made marketing efforts and drew the attention of people to this opportunity" therefore in July, 2010 many blogs, famous in the past, for example, the former blog by Mikhail Verbitsky tiphareth were sold).

2011: The hacker attacks put LJ out of action

On March 30, 2011 there took place the first large-scale DDoS attack on LiveJournal. Because of it the LJ service was unavailable for nearly eight hours. According to representatives of LiveJournal Russia, "the attack of similar power happened for the first time for the history LJ".

The second attack happened on Monday, April 4, and also led to serious failure in work of LiveJournal. On April 6, the third wave which led to temporary termination of work of service again was recorded.

These attacks were officially commented by the development director of the products SUP Ilya Dronov, having said that "the superpurpose of all this is manipulation of audience of LJ" and desire of malefactors that "LJ ceased to exist as the platform". In addition, Dronov reported that the second DDoS attack was directed directly to the first dozens of top bloggers and communities LJ, but not to any specific online diary which hackers would like to put out of action.

It is also necessary to note that representatives of LiveJournal Russia, according to them, did not address law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation concerning these attacks yet, though were going to make it.

Experts confirm that the blog by Alexei Navalny, the creator of the website RosPil was the initial purpose of DDoS attacks on LiveJournal. Later the list of the attacked blogs extended on the majority of the most popular LJ diaries. "It has to be obvious to specialists in a Russian-speaking blogosphere that in the list there are blogs by the most different people writing about absolutely different things and being some of the most popular authors, so-called "chiliarches". Whether it was attempt "blur" the real purpose of the attack which was obviously designated among the first attempts of DDoS or the list of objectionable blogs became wider - we do not know", - Maria Garnayeva, the expert of Kaspersky Lab company notes.

• April 7, 2011. The civic chamber of the Russian Federation urged law enforcement authorities to deal with attacks to LiveJournal which members of chamber compared to armed attack on^[2].

"The blogosphere and social media in Russia play a huge role in development of civil society. In recent years the community of bloggers repeatedly paid attention and citizens and the authorities to problem situations, the first rose in defense of the rights of people, fought for justice. Certainly, one of pillars of this community is LiveJournal. Within the last week this service repeatedly became a target of cybercriminals that it is possible to compare to the armed attack to objectionable printing house", - members of the civic chamber of the Russian Federation consider.

In the statement representatives of Public chamber addressed law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation, having urged them to take all necessary measures to understand a situation with DDoS attacks on service. Besides, it was recommended to toughen at the legislative level responsibility for the deliberate attacks on the websites and services in Russia.

"It is obvious that in the future a role of a global network in public, political and business processes will only increase. If today we do not show to possible criminals our solidarity on protection of a blogosphere, further this process will be more difficult to be stopped", - it is emphasized in the statement.

• On April 8, 2011 it became known that the Russian militiamen specializing in investigation of crimes in the field of high technologies cannot be connected to clarification of circumstances of the hacker attack to service of the LiveJournal web blogs^[2] yet^[2].

"The statement from administration of the website did not arrive, and we cannot begin independent investigation as not our competence - the LJ servers are in the USA and it is jurisdiction of the American law enforcement agencies", - the representative of the press service of Administration "K" of the MIA of Russia reported ITAR-TASS today. "We will be able to start investigation of this crime only after receipt of the corresponding statement", - emphasized the interlocutor of the agency.

• In May, 2011 it became known, the LiveJournal service is going to open representation in the capital of Ukraine - Kiev. The company reported about it in letters to some Ukrainian bloggers in whom it invited them to a meeting with the management, AIN.UA with reference to the LJ blogger of jesfor reports. Also it became known that now in development there is a development of the LJ platform which will allow to create the full-fledged websites, similar to WordPress. Besides, LJ will start a possibility of advertizing of the blogs, communities and separate posts, by an example of advertizing in Facebook. For development of service it is going to develop the program for volunteering: for beginning users; experts and selebret.

• * on November 16, 2011 the Sup Media company announced departure of the CEO of LiveJournal Russia service ("LiveJournal") Svetlana Ivannikova who held this position in 2010. Ivannikova's desire to be engaged in own business is called the reason. Its place was taken by Ilya Dronov who since 2008 is the development director of the products Sup Media.

At the same time Sup Media announced position assignment of the media director famous Internet figure Anton Nosik.

The nose assures that outflow of users from LJ does not happen, and there is deceleration of growth rates. "Attendance of LJ has seasonal nature, at the same time, according to TNS-Gallup, in 2011 in every month attendance was higher, than for the same periods of last years, - he says. - The exception was made by only an August when the number of the Russian audience — 11 million — was equal to last year's".

At the same time the new media director of Sup recognizes that in Livejournal there are things requiring change. "Ilya Dronov has corresponding ideas with which implementation I will help him", - reported the Nose of CNews^[1].

Ivannikova's leaving, most likely, is connected with discontent with results of activity of LiveJournal, the head of Liveinternet service German Klimenko considers. "The Internet company — not steel works, and management it should not trust people who as in a case from Ivannikova, are good managers, but do not understand technologies, - he considers. - The nose of these shortcomings is deprived, however all the same will not envy it: blogging platforms reached the limit and hardly Livejournal to turn into the second Facebook".

One of the former top managers of Sup it is pessimistic looks at the future of LiveJournal. "It seems that there is no understanding of what to do with this service neither in Sup, nor beyond its limits, - the interlocutor of CNews says. - Respectively to solve a problem some staff movements it will not turn out. Besides the audience of LJ began to be negative to administration of service just at the Nose, and Dronov, to some extent, bears responsibility for the last technology failures in Livejournal".

Notes