Migrants to IJ, 2007

Just kidding.

The latest smooth move by 6A/SUP (no more accounts without ads unless you pay up) put me in a nostalgic mood.

I've summarized LiveJournal's greatest customer service disasters, going back to April 2005.

Remember Nipple Gate!

It's a history lesson of fail.

This just in from BoingBoing.

While Ben and Mena Trott, along with the rest of Six Apart, surely made a handsome profit on the sale of LJ to SUP, I think it's safe to say that their public and corporate image did not fare so well. Despite a conspicuous lack of detail in the following, it's not hard to read between the lines...

------

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/12/movable-type-now-und.html

Movable Type now under a free license
Posted by Cory Doctorow, December 12, 2007 11:41 PM

Movable Type, the popular blogging software, has gone free/open, relicensing its code under the GPL, the gold standard for free licenses. We've used MT ever since we migrated away from Blogger (and Ben Trott, MT's co-founder, personally did the migration for us!) and it's great to see the company adopting best practices with its code-base. Even better is the company's statement about why they've adopted a free license: because they want to promote freedom.

"Like many of us on the team, some of you have been waiting for this moment for years. For a business, an open source license affects boring things like how a product is created, updated, and distributed. But the open source movement has always been about something more important: Freedom. With a name like "Movable Type", we've always been keenly aware of the importance of freedom, as that name echoes both the birth of the printing press and the creation of independent media that an individual can control.

"Our goal has always been to create the best blogging platform in the world and to put that power in the hands of as many people as possible."

-----

Yes, you read that right. We only want to bring happiness and joy to all the little children of the world. Excuse me - I have to go to the bathroom.

Thanks to nebris over at CommieJournal.com I found this little trinket of information.

http://elfwreck.livejournal.com/228345.html

Apparently SUP is starting to remove the search capability for certain interests while keeping a double standard for those that really should be in the current ban-list.

I recommend everyone read My thoughts on the sale -- again -- of LiveJournal by Insomnia, who used to be the "all things business" manager of LiveJournal back in the day (2000-2002) and has a lot of insight regarding the recent sale of LJ to the Russian company SUP. There is more info in the comments as well, regarding LJ's data mining capabilities, etc.

I've been digging around for more on 6A/Barak "Borat the Hutt" Berkowitz and came across this gem:

http://r2.nokia.com/nmc2004/speaker_09.jsp?sid=9&ca=sbs and http://r2.nokia.com/nmc2004/pdf/berkowitz_sharing_a_mobile_life.pdf

I haven't posted it to the "news" thread on LJ yet because I imagine it'd be screened and someone there would contact that site to take the file down. But in any case, I've saved a copy of it should it happen anyway.

Slide/page 28 is particularly lolarious, and that whole presentation explains why his Vox blog is nothing BUT photos. Also, there was much cacklesnorting that they never took "CONFIDENTIAL" off of those slides.

( More Barak Bitz )

And then there's this from SixApart: http://www.sixapart.com/about/news/2007/09/were_opening_th.html

You know, it would be nice if they actually put that in LJ's news. GRRR!

Edit: They have an affiliate program?! WTF?! http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/affiliate

I have been granted permission by keieeeye to provide a link to an entry in my personal IJ in which I satirize (I hope.) what might be the next step taken by Live Journal / Six Apart.

(Strikethrough 07 - Phase III?)
(Public / Safe for work)