LJ News

[libertango]

Livejournal has been bought by Six Apart, the folks who make Moveable Type and Typepad.

Hard to tell what the eventual impact of this will be. I'm generally averse to all business mergers, as studies have shown 80% of them fail -- they're a terrible business move. I suspect bradfitz, the founder of LJ, will probably be looking for a new job within a year (although that may be the point -- this may have been a way for him to get out of LJ gracefully).

Also, the Moveable Type folks seem to do a good product, as the Nielsen-Haydens will attest (among many others).

Still. 80% is a hard hill to climb.

Comments

[ivymcallister.livejournal.com]

I've heard rumblings that possible (and even likely) changes could include eradicating photo-posts, extra icon space and other LJ upgrades in order to simplify things for ease of management. I suppose time will tell, but judging from their track record, I wouldn't be surprised to see LJ become something of a bare-bones blogging tool again.

[pssst-hey-me.livejournal.com]

It could be like when Blogger sold to Google - I mean it brought with it several good things.

As long as they don't change the price - or the general idea behind LJ I don't mind.

And hello there! =)

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

I love movable type. It's a good product. And they have good support. My only problems with it are:
1. Lack of comment threading and therefore e-mails to folks that people have commented to them. There *are* plug-ins for it, but it's work and I don't have time.
2. Spam. LJ has the nice enclosed environment that doesn't allow for spam. MT doesn't have that.

This should be interesting.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

No offense, but rumors this early into a merger are usually bullshit. YMMV.

Whose track record? Movable Type?

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but google wasn't a blogging tool. So, blogger enhanced google's portfolio.

LJ and MT are competitors in the blogging world. And this could mean that something like the wonderful LJ environment could erode (which an earlier poster in here has posited). That would suck. Even though I'm an MT user, I do admire the LJ environment and community.

It would be nice to see an integration between the two tools. MT has some powerful customizations that you can do, and LJ seems limited on that score.

[bella-peligrosa.livejournal.com]

Hopeful skepticism is the way to go on this. I would hope that LJ won't lose some of its more compelling features. I would hope that this means only improvements like they have been claiming. Doesn't mean I'll believe everything they say!