nameandnature

Link blog?

I keep a sort of mini blog over at Delicious. It's a collection of links I want to save, plus a short description. On LiveJournal, there's a feed of it at pw201_links, but there's no point posting comments there, as I won't see them. andrewducker regularly posts batches of his links to his LJ, and they often create some interesting discussion. I wondered whether I should do the same, or whether that would mean death was too good for me, as it is for those people who use Loudtwitter to post their "tweets" to LJ. I'd probably post links once a week or in batches of 10, whichever happened sooner. What do you think?

[Poll #1462193]

LJ links up with Google ads

As you might have seen over on news, LJ have formed a partnership with Google, allowing users who pay for their journals to place Google ads on them and earn a bit of money (LJ itself probably makes money off people who sign up, they're not taking a cut of the money for people viewing the ads).

I won't be doing this, as the small amount of money I might make from ads isn't worth the annoyance to my readers. As someone whose comment I can't find said, it looks like LJ have done this to keep up with other services like Wordpress, who offer ads as an option. SUP bought out LJ because LJ apparently is blogging in Russia, so perhaps this is part of a trend. I hope they might do more "serious blogging" stuff as opposed to social networking stuff: I'd like to see LJ on my own domain working properly, comment feeds (so I don't have to do it myself with Python scripts and gaffer tape), Google Analytics, and a pony.

Of course, the best thing about news postings is the hordes of whining commenters and the responses mocking them for whining. Pages 6 and 7 are particular rich in put-downs and image macros. It's interesting to see that the "bugger off to Dreamwidth" response is getting popular: DW has made a name for itself as the place where you flounce to because The Man is keeping you down, Man. Fandom folk are pretty self-aware, so they mock this stereotype themselves. All good fun.

As readers of news will know, LiveJournal is in the process of electing representatives from among its users, to sit on the LiveJournal advisory board, alongside various e-luminaries.

( Who I think you should vote for )

Regardless of whether you agree with me, if you've moaned about what 6Apart and SUP have done over the last few years, please read the candidates' manifestos and vote, and encourage others to do the same. If you have already voted, note that it is possible to change your vote until the election closes, on 29th May.

I'd like to remind them that as a trusted radio personality, I can be helpful in rounding up fanficcers to toil in their underground salt mines.

Yes, the Russians bought LiveJournal. Either it's a plot, which has been planned for over a year by the oligarchs, to destroy the free speech of the large number of Russian LJ users; or perhaps it's just that Six Apart got fed up of all the complaints.

Theories abound: some people blame the sale plans for recent attempts to clean-up LJ, like the Strikethrough debacle and the recent introduction of the "denounce" button on everyone's journal. (hairyears has a good posting on the latter, by the way, arguing that it's an entirely sensible move on LJ's part to prevent them from being sued by right-wing nutjobs).

Other good sources: Metafilter has some discussion, Encyclopedia Dramatica has some links to the stupidest responses so far, and vladmuthafucka records the thoughts of Putin himself.

I'll stick around and see what happens, at least. ljdump runs every night here, just in case, but it's far more likely that I'd use it to recover from some technical failure at LJ than to recover from a censored journal.