LiveJournal (LJ), also known as Zhivoy Zhurnal (Живой Журнал),¹⁾ is a blogging and social networking service founded by Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999, sold to Six Apart (6A) in 2005,²⁾ then it was bought out by SUP Media in 2007³⁾ after the Russians gained a foothold.

Historically, LiveJournal was a bustling hub for fan communities in the era where 100×100 avatars, friend lists, and RSS feeds were brand new concepts for users coming from an old-school BBS, IRC, or Usenet. This surge in popularity eventually led to the 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 the Six Apart acquisition⁵⁾ and surge in Russian activity,⁶⁾ the existing fan communities were slowly growing discontent after the mass suspensions in 2007,⁷⁾ and the subsequent SUP Media acquisition didn't instill confidence⁸⁾ with Anton Nossik dismissing the boycotts⁹⁾ as a conspiracy.¹⁰⁾¹¹⁾ In turn, most users fled to alternatives like AO3, DeadJournal, Dreamwidth, and Tumblr.¹²⁾

With the Great Recession and mass layoffs,¹³⁾ LiveJournal added new features for the Russian userbase, though it didn't go over well,¹⁴⁾ then they overhauled the layout in 2014.¹⁵⁾ The servers would eventually be moved to Russia with SUP Media in December 2016, resulting in the Terms of Service update on April 7, 2017, now forcing users to comply with the Russian government's own limitations on speech.^16)17)18)19)

The decay of LiveJournal can be attributed to its post-acquisition enshittification, where the opinions of the old userbase were tossed aside, and the gradual restrictions on speech which limited creative potential and diminished the userbase's trust.²⁰⁾ You can't exactly call something 'yours' if the staff is willing to terminate it for arbitrary conservative pressure to censor progressive subjects.

• LiveJournal's mascot is Frank the Goat and they had a slogan of “be a goat, not a sheep”.²¹⁾²²⁾ It isn't clear if their slogan has been retired, but it carries a bit of irony as it discourages herd behavior, yet the post-acquisition limitations on speech ironically encourages some level of herd behavior.
• 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, stems from a LiveJournal community about public and personal drama on the platform,²⁵⁾ but the community was eventually banned, so 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.
• For the record, Tumblr didn't formally surpass LiveJournal until 2012,²⁷⁾ so older 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's maps on the Russian intervention which were so accurate, it had to suspend operations.²⁸⁾

• LiveJournal - The front page of LiveJournal.