LiveJournal(Zhivoy Zhurnal) (Живой Журнал)¹⁾ is a social networking service, revolving around blogs, which was founded by Brad Fitzpatrick under “Danga Interactive” in 1999. It was then sold to Six Apart in 2005,²⁾ then bought out by SUP Media in 2007³⁾ after Russians gained a foothold.

In the past, LiveJournal was a bustling hub for fan communities in the era where 100×100 icons, friend lists, and RSS feeds were brand new concepts for users that came from an old-school BBS, IRC, or Usenet. This surge in popularity eventually led to a temporary invite code system, or a $5 paywall, which was in place from September 2001 to December 2003 since their servers couldn't keep up with the demand.⁴⁾

Following its first acquisition⁵⁾ and massive surge in Russian activity,⁶⁾ the fan communities had slowly grew discontent with LiveJournal after the waves of mass suspensions in 2007,⁷⁾ and the subsequent Russian acquisition didn't instill confidence⁸⁾ after Anton Nossik dismissing their boycotts⁹⁾ as a conspiracy.¹⁰⁾¹¹⁾ In turn, most fan communities fled to AO3, DeadJournal, Dreamwidth, and Tumblr.¹²⁾

After the Great Recession hit,¹³⁾ LiveJournal introduced new features for its Russian-speaking users that didn't really go over well,¹⁴⁾ then they overhauled the layout in 2014.¹⁵⁾ The servers eventually moved to Russia with SUP Media in December 2016, resulting in the Terms of Service update on April 7, 2017, forcing the remaining users to comply with the Russian government's own limitations on speech.^16)17)18)19)

The decay of LiveJournal can be attributed to a slew of poor business decisions and gradual restrictions on speech, which limited its creative potential and diminished the original userbase's trust.²⁰⁾ You can't exactly call something your blog, diary, fanfiction archive, or journal if the website's staff will terminate it for business reasons or arbitrary conservative pressure. A trend that Tumblr is now repeating.

• LiveJournal had the slogan of “be a goat, not a sheep”,²¹⁾²²⁾ which is why their website mascot is a goat named Frank. It isn't known if the slogan has been retired since then.
  • There is a bit of irony that the website's slogan discourages herd behavior, considering that the stragglers who stay behind on LiveJournal would ironically become complacent sheep.
• Communities were first introduced to LiveJournal in December 16, 2000,²³⁾ but fan communities didn't actually use these until 2002, presumably after the support team set up a category.²⁴⁾
• The controversial wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica, actually stems from a LiveJournal community about personal drama on the platform,²⁵⁾ but the community was banned and the wiki was born.
• At one point, I did have a LiveJournal blog, but I was very young and it mostly consisted of segmented archived television schedules.²⁶⁾ I do miss those funky little mood icons though.
• It should be noted that Tumblr didn't fully surpass LiveJournal until 2012,²⁷⁾ so fandom controversies like Hetalia's infamous Anime Boston 2010 incident were still getting reactions on LiveJournal.
• The platform is still alive, but it hasn't been all that notable, outside of dragon_first_1 posting maps about the Russian intervention that were so accurate, it had to suspend operations.²⁸⁾

• LiveJournal - The front page of LiveJournal.