The history of Cyrillic LJ: how Russian management crushed the rise of Russian-language blogging
Winter, apparently, just came: in 2019, George R.R. Martin left LiveJournal, reminding someone, and shocking someone, so that George R.R. Martin was in LJ to this - and LJ is still alive. But no, it seemed. The current state of LiveJournal cannot be called alive, but one can wait for a long time to complete the process of entropy - but nobody likes to wait on the Internet. So the Americans took the opportunity to publish the epitaph " how LiveJournal became the discoverer of blogs, and then lost them ."
Reading of which causes funny feelings - even when I used LJ, I rarely remembered the existence of the English segment - we were so divided that we could, with equal success, live on different sites. For 13 years, I wandered for the American half a few times, each time getting more and more surprised that there was someone else alive.
')
And with all the isolation of the community from each other, LJ, in the end, managed to lose both (one broke, the other lost). But without the history of the Russian-speaking segment, it will be half the sad story of two cities. I'll tell her how I saw her.
The fate of Russian LJ from the American half of the story is different in everything, except that both segments of LJ ended up badly.
The English-language segment was a peaceful blogging platform, which satisfied the everyday needs of the mainstream user in a prosperous consumer society, the main of which, apparently, was curiosity, judging by the theme of the largest English-speaking community Oh No They Didn't!
In Russia, the main driver of LJ growth was pain.
The heyday of the Russian segment of the mid-second half zero rested on a politicized core. Different completely apolitical communities and authors can be remembered, but no other party has been tied up in such a big tangle.
And the politicized core was huge and boiling, because in it the most active authors mixed up into two ideological camps were mixed: columnists, publicists, simple journalists, and ordinary active writing users who want to compare with them.
Actually, this unity is the struggle of opposites, the “guardians” against the “liberals” and was the core of LJ, the most powerful source of gravity in the media space. In general, the most valuable resource for business.
In August 2006, the rights to develop the Russian-speaking segment were bought by SUP Fabrik , co-owned by billionaire Alexander Mamut.
As it turned out, I also signed up for LiveJournal in August 2006, but got used to it more or less a little later, starting to get involved in the life of the community only after 2-3 months later. Therefore, I missed the introduction of bloggers with the new administration - but judging by the fact that the word "SUP" had already become abusive - it was enchanting.
The next year of LJ life was probably the brightest: the political atmosphere escalated in the country, debates sharpened in LJ, and the show “opinion leaders of all LJ against SUP” was added to the dynamics of “guardians” and “liberals”.
Apparently, the SUP company didn’t pay much attention to such trifles as the stirring of some bloggers on the Internet; from whom the site is the main one. At least I'm nothing but a complete lack of respect for users and an understanding of the importance of such trifles as a team for a collective blogging service; I cannot explain the fact that just a year later, SUP looked at its lands, found them in good shape and concluded That buying LJ entirely will be a good business decision.
Thus, at the end of 2007, Six Apart, founded by Brad Fitzpatrick, was entirely bought out by the Russians for surprisingly modest, from today's point of view, $ 30 million.
This is not very good when a resource, the life-giving energy of which rests on the eternal conflict of the pro-government party with the opposition, endlessly generating content that attracts the main audience, suddenly finds itself in the pocket of one pro-government billionaire. Especially considering the already drowned reputation of his administration by this point.
However, this quickly passed - and in six months, two billionaires became two: Alisher Usmanov joined Mamut as the new co-owner of SUP.
Among the “liberal” part of the core of the audience, apocalyptic sentiments were growing. There was a feeling that we were all sold en masse, as serfs, and now we are the peasant theater of the barin, who can at any moment order the objectionable serf to shut up his mouth.
However, in retrospect, it seems to me that the search for political motives in the purchase of Mamut and Usmanov LJ were exaggerated. What looked like the seizure of a stronghold of freedom of speech could well have been solely a business move.
In the end, it was already the time of the “Medvedev thaw” of 2008–2012 - the last postponing of the Runet before all fears began to come true. But then it was still possible to exhale. Medvedev met with Deniskin (the prediction that Habr would reach a new level came true quite the opposite: it was Medvedev who was soon lowered).
Most likely, neither Usmanov nor Mamut had any idea how the online community is managed, especially when it comes to the loudest and most capricious Runet community - and it does not seem like they even come to the first step: understand that they are dealing with people.
I suppose, however, that the horror with the serf theaters that wasn’t of me at the time was also not about that - judging by how billionaire comrades handled LJ, they perceived the audience as cattle - and not in a bad sense, but literally: cattle that Pasture weed nibbles - most importantly, recount on the heads - is there any litter or loss?
The years of SUP Media's financial experiments, which had already turned into a media holding, over LJ together and separately with their other projects, began. Effective managers constantly gathered and thought about who to milk, who to cut, how to increase offspring and increase their size, looked into their ears, looked at their teeth, pulled the udder - in general, they tried hard to think of this stubborn herd to pay for itself.
I must pay tribute to "SUPOV": they are still stubborn. Because nobody wanted to leave too much - the “liberals” didn’t take off at all and didn’t fly away together.
Bloggers, especially the demographic group, which then constituted the political core of LJ, can really be a stubborn flock, an extremely inert mass, which is incredibly hard to move somewhere. But the energetic leadership of SUP Media succeeded.
And again, Silicon Valley came to the rescue: Livejournal was at the beginning of the zero, Facebook came at the end, still actively growing, quite young and attracting the “liberal camp” a) neutral with both sides of American origin and administration; b) a fresh spirit of belonging to the global community.
Moreover, as a platform for publishing Facebook was and remains absolutely terrible - none of the actively writing users who migrated to Facebook from LiveJournal, did not migrate silently, without opening up some period of acclimatization. Including me; Yes, LJ capabilities, with all its minuses, did not suffice.
But this is also a hello to his SUP management: to lose people for whom the walls of texts are both passion and a source of income, often, and even manage to do it with a special shame, by losing them to Facebook itself, which was made as if specially repulsive writing people are so physically uncomfortable that people get used to it with loud moans. Columnists, journalists, and just clowns with flour got used to Facebook, Zuckerberg's fire on what the world stands (and to this day is fair) - but no one thought to return to LiveJournal.
Half split, the core of LJ cooled down and died - what else could happen to it if the remaining half was, in fact, a single camp? Moreover, it is really internally stronger connected than the “liberal” party - the leaders of the “guardians” worked either in already fairly consolidated pro-Kremlin media, or in political technology firms — they had nowhere to physically split.
In this sense, a much more atomized “liberal” party turned out to be more capable of maintaining a twinkle - finding themselves alone without a single “guardian” nearby, the “liberals” would immediately split into two camps - especially since in the absence of a common enemy, it became clear that “Liberals” actually consist, for the most part, of liberals and leftists — good old enemies, democrats against communists.
The “Guardians” scoffed at these eternal internal fillers in the “liberal camp” - but the fate of LJ after the outcome of the “liberals” gave birth to a dilemma: what’s worse is the constant readiness to quarrel, which, in fact, keeps the light of the community - or disciplined solidarity, which, remaining without a beloved enemy, instantly turned to stone? I leave the question open.
Not the outcome of the "liberals" killed LJ - the destruction of the bright core of the audience killed LJ. This core was the largest political space of the runet, its Forum in ancient Roman meaning, which closely mixed people who “during working hours” were segmented and preserved by their media, but after work they turned out to be at the Forum - and no one wrote tired, pulling together the rest of the media in which they worked, all at once. And the administration managed to squeeze out one of the two groups forming this core.
The core of LiveJournal has gone out.
Since the history of the Russian segment of LJ from the very beginning was so closely connected with the political history of Russia itself, then the conditional border, the point of no return for the former, living LJ, I would have spent in 2012. The political core had already safely and irrevocably split apart by this time platforms.
However, left without a political community, LJ still retained for some time the last political group - followers of Alexei Navalny.
SUP, it turns out, pecrat its existence in 2013. Was dispersed pissing rags? No, combined with Rambler and "Poster". Poor "Billboard".
In 2014, this whole farm was renamed Rambler & Co. I want to believe - realizing the non-obligation to perpetuate the glorious name SUP in the centuries? However, judging by the smoothness of the process of dissolution of "SUPA" in the depths of Rambler & Co - they are still somewhere in there. Well, fortunately, Rambler knows how to manage projects and teach them ... oh wait.
There seems to be no alternative to it - there is no resembling policy for replacing politics, and there can be no - one of the most addictive and mass themes in the public space is politics.
Previously, the political core attracted a significant part of the audience, and the first association with LJ was “politics”. Now the first association with LJ - .. "Jeans"?
Instead of large topics that unite crowds of users, there are more clients of popular bloggers. But this is not a community.
One of the things that distinguishes the community from site visitors is the existence of a time dimension as a significant factor. A community is not only a reach, but also a process. And this is exactly what SUP destroyed in LJ.
To answer this question, I had to write a whole article: the feeling that LJ died many years ago still struggled hard with their shameful, but, nevertheless, continuing existence.
But now I have found an explanation. I will not speak for everyone, but when I say that LJ is dead - I mean the community. And not only the notorious political core - while it was in the center, several smaller clusters were grouped around it - for example, ru_auto and adjacent thematic communities. Without a kernel, they are all too far away from each other - just a collection of small communities on random topics with falling chances of crossing the audience.
Actually, as SUP LJ saw it, he did it this way: after killing the community, but having saved the site with attendance. Now these people are somewhere inside the "Rambler", which is itself a zinger.
But keeping a LiveJournal as one site without a center will be difficult, if not impossible — entropy will continue to grow until atomic connections between smaller communities break completely. This can probably be considered death. Or the completion of the decomposition of the corpse.
Reading of which causes funny feelings - even when I used LJ, I rarely remembered the existence of the English segment - we were so divided that we could, with equal success, live on different sites. For 13 years, I wandered for the American half a few times, each time getting more and more surprised that there was someone else alive.
')
And with all the isolation of the community from each other, LJ, in the end, managed to lose both (one broke, the other lost). But without the history of the Russian-speaking segment, it will be half the sad story of two cities. I'll tell her how I saw her.
The fate of Russian LJ from the American half of the story is different in everything, except that both segments of LJ ended up badly.
The English-language segment was a peaceful blogging platform, which satisfied the everyday needs of the mainstream user in a prosperous consumer society, the main of which, apparently, was curiosity, judging by the theme of the largest English-speaking community Oh No They Didn't!
In Russia, the main driver of LJ growth was pain.
The first term of Vladimir Putin’s presidency began with a swift attack on politically independent federal TV channels: in 2000, Boris Berezovsky could not refuse to sell his 49% ORT shares , and in April 2001, the famous “defeat of NTV” took place, with control over which as a result, Vladimir Gusinsky said goodbye. In the Russian-speaking public space, in which a lot of journalistic voices managed to get stronger during the 90s, frosts began to appear - and the space for speech on the federal air began to shrink dramatically.LiveJournal is a completely new thing then, the blog platform in absolutely free at that time both from the pressure of both dictatorships and corporations on the Internet, the single global communication space, could not be more appropriate. Runet pioneers began to get acquainted with LJ back in the 90s, but the rise in its popularity in 2001–2004 seemed to be a direct result of the actions of the Kremlin.
The heyday of the Russian segment of the mid-second half zero rested on a politicized core. Different completely apolitical communities and authors can be remembered, but no other party has been tied up in such a big tangle.
And the politicized core was huge and boiling, because in it the most active authors mixed up into two ideological camps were mixed: columnists, publicists, simple journalists, and ordinary active writing users who want to compare with them.
Actually, this unity is the struggle of opposites, the “guardians” against the “liberals” and was the core of LJ, the most powerful source of gravity in the media space. In general, the most valuable resource for business.
Problems of Russian LJ began with the beginning of the Russification of his administration
In August 2006, the rights to develop the Russian-speaking segment were bought by SUP Fabrik , co-owned by billionaire Alexander Mamut.
As it turned out, I also signed up for LiveJournal in August 2006, but got used to it more or less a little later, starting to get involved in the life of the community only after 2-3 months later. Therefore, I missed the introduction of bloggers with the new administration - but judging by the fact that the word "SUP" had already become abusive - it was enchanting.
The next year of LJ life was probably the brightest: the political atmosphere escalated in the country, debates sharpened in LJ, and the show “opinion leaders of all LJ against SUP” was added to the dynamics of “guardians” and “liberals”.
Apparently, the SUP company didn’t pay much attention to such trifles as the stirring of some bloggers on the Internet; from whom the site is the main one. At least I'm nothing but a complete lack of respect for users and an understanding of the importance of such trifles as a team for a collective blogging service; I cannot explain the fact that just a year later, SUP looked at its lands, found them in good shape and concluded That buying LJ entirely will be a good business decision.
Thus, at the end of 2007, Six Apart, founded by Brad Fitzpatrick, was entirely bought out by the Russians for surprisingly modest, from today's point of view, $ 30 million.
This is not very good when a resource, the life-giving energy of which rests on the eternal conflict of the pro-government party with the opposition, endlessly generating content that attracts the main audience, suddenly finds itself in the pocket of one pro-government billionaire. Especially considering the already drowned reputation of his administration by this point.
However, this quickly passed - and in six months, two billionaires became two: Alisher Usmanov joined Mamut as the new co-owner of SUP.
Among the “liberal” part of the core of the audience, apocalyptic sentiments were growing. There was a feeling that we were all sold en masse, as serfs, and now we are the peasant theater of the barin, who can at any moment order the objectionable serf to shut up his mouth.
However, in retrospect, it seems to me that the search for political motives in the purchase of Mamut and Usmanov LJ were exaggerated. What looked like the seizure of a stronghold of freedom of speech could well have been solely a business move.
In the end, it was already the time of the “Medvedev thaw” of 2008–2012 - the last postponing of the Runet before all fears began to come true. But then it was still possible to exhale. Medvedev met with Deniskin (the prediction that Habr would reach a new level came true quite the opposite: it was Medvedev who was soon lowered).
Most likely, neither Usmanov nor Mamut had any idea how the online community is managed, especially when it comes to the loudest and most capricious Runet community - and it does not seem like they even come to the first step: understand that they are dealing with people.
I suppose, however, that the horror with the serf theaters that wasn’t of me at the time was also not about that - judging by how billionaire comrades handled LJ, they perceived the audience as cattle - and not in a bad sense, but literally: cattle that Pasture weed nibbles - most importantly, recount on the heads - is there any litter or loss?
The years of SUP Media's financial experiments, which had already turned into a media holding, over LJ together and separately with their other projects, began. Effective managers constantly gathered and thought about who to milk, who to cut, how to increase offspring and increase their size, looked into their ears, looked at their teeth, pulled the udder - in general, they tried hard to think of this stubborn herd to pay for itself.
Exodus of “Liberals” from LiveJournal on Facebook
I must pay tribute to "SUPOV": they are still stubborn. Because nobody wanted to leave too much - the “liberals” didn’t take off at all and didn’t fly away together.
Bloggers, especially the demographic group, which then constituted the political core of LJ, can really be a stubborn flock, an extremely inert mass, which is incredibly hard to move somewhere. But the energetic leadership of SUP Media succeeded.
And again, Silicon Valley came to the rescue: Livejournal was at the beginning of the zero, Facebook came at the end, still actively growing, quite young and attracting the “liberal camp” a) neutral with both sides of American origin and administration; b) a fresh spirit of belonging to the global community.
Moreover, as a platform for publishing Facebook was and remains absolutely terrible - none of the actively writing users who migrated to Facebook from LiveJournal, did not migrate silently, without opening up some period of acclimatization. Including me; Yes, LJ capabilities, with all its minuses, did not suffice.
But this is also a hello to his SUP management: to lose people for whom the walls of texts are both passion and a source of income, often, and even manage to do it with a special shame, by losing them to Facebook itself, which was made as if specially repulsive writing people are so physically uncomfortable that people get used to it with loud moans. Columnists, journalists, and just clowns with flour got used to Facebook, Zuckerberg's fire on what the world stands (and to this day is fair) - but no one thought to return to LiveJournal.
Effects
Half split, the core of LJ cooled down and died - what else could happen to it if the remaining half was, in fact, a single camp? Moreover, it is really internally stronger connected than the “liberal” party - the leaders of the “guardians” worked either in already fairly consolidated pro-Kremlin media, or in political technology firms — they had nowhere to physically split.
In this sense, a much more atomized “liberal” party turned out to be more capable of maintaining a twinkle - finding themselves alone without a single “guardian” nearby, the “liberals” would immediately split into two camps - especially since in the absence of a common enemy, it became clear that “Liberals” actually consist, for the most part, of liberals and leftists — good old enemies, democrats against communists.
The “Guardians” scoffed at these eternal internal fillers in the “liberal camp” - but the fate of LJ after the outcome of the “liberals” gave birth to a dilemma: what’s worse is the constant readiness to quarrel, which, in fact, keeps the light of the community - or disciplined solidarity, which, remaining without a beloved enemy, instantly turned to stone? I leave the question open.
Not the outcome of the "liberals" killed LJ - the destruction of the bright core of the audience killed LJ. This core was the largest political space of the runet, its Forum in ancient Roman meaning, which closely mixed people who “during working hours” were segmented and preserved by their media, but after work they turned out to be at the Forum - and no one wrote tired, pulling together the rest of the media in which they worked, all at once. And the administration managed to squeeze out one of the two groups forming this core.
The core of LiveJournal has gone out.
Since the history of the Russian segment of LJ from the very beginning was so closely connected with the political history of Russia itself, then the conditional border, the point of no return for the former, living LJ, I would have spent in 2012. The political core had already safely and irrevocably split apart by this time platforms.
However, left without a political community, LJ still retained for some time the last political group - followers of Alexei Navalny.
LJ Navalny, by the way, is obviously the brightest, but not the only example of something distinctive, born in LJ thanks to the opportunities and grown out of its community.
These were some kind of probing, hinting that the LJ community had in fact accumulated enough potential for a full-fledged change of generations, during which the tops of the tops would occupy the original and original blogs that could arise and become so thanks to LJ. And it is no longer just about politics, but, for example, psychology . But, in the end, it turned into a tantalizing continuation of the scene after the credits of the film, which fell through at the box office - and buried with it the sequel.
Page Navalny in the history of Live Journal (or Live Page in the history of Navalny) was finally helped by Roskomnadzor in 2014, in response to blocking which his Live Journal, Navalny, moved to Standalon.
Afterlife
SUP, it turns out, pecrat its existence in 2013. Was dispersed pissing rags? No, combined with Rambler and "Poster". Poor "Billboard".
In 2014, this whole farm was renamed Rambler & Co. I want to believe - realizing the non-obligation to perpetuate the glorious name SUP in the centuries? However, judging by the smoothness of the process of dissolution of "SUPA" in the depths of Rambler & Co - they are still somewhere in there. Well, fortunately, Rambler knows how to manage projects and teach them ... oh wait.
The story “How SUP Fabrik wanted to weed a bed of LJ, and inadvertently made sepukku to itself” became an exceptional example of community management in which the management consistently corroded the community - and deserves more careful and deeper analysis. And then after all other such brave yet go find. Even among the wide range of pro-government media, SUP stood out - no one repeated their mistakes: the rest of the show-bosses perfectly seem to understand the value of the conflict for holding attention - political shows play a central role on all federal TV channels, and on all shows show is going on.Of course, LJ still exists. But this is a completely different celestial body. There is not and will not be again a political core.
There seems to be no alternative to it - there is no resembling policy for replacing politics, and there can be no - one of the most addictive and mass themes in the public space is politics.
Previously, the political core attracted a significant part of the audience, and the first association with LJ was “politics”. Now the first association with LJ - .. "Jeans"?
Instead of large topics that unite crowds of users, there are more clients of popular bloggers. But this is not a community.
One of the things that distinguishes the community from site visitors is the existence of a time dimension as a significant factor. A community is not only a reach, but also a process. And this is exactly what SUP destroyed in LJ.
So alive LJ or dead?
To answer this question, I had to write a whole article: the feeling that LJ died many years ago still struggled hard with their shameful, but, nevertheless, continuing existence.
But now I have found an explanation. I will not speak for everyone, but when I say that LJ is dead - I mean the community. And not only the notorious political core - while it was in the center, several smaller clusters were grouped around it - for example, ru_auto and adjacent thematic communities. Without a kernel, they are all too far away from each other - just a collection of small communities on random topics with falling chances of crossing the audience.
Actually, as SUP LJ saw it, he did it this way: after killing the community, but having saved the site with attendance. Now these people are somewhere inside the "Rambler", which is itself a zinger.
But keeping a LiveJournal as one site without a center will be difficult, if not impossible — entropy will continue to grow until atomic connections between smaller communities break completely. This can probably be considered death. Or the completion of the decomposition of the corpse.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/441696/
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