Alternatives to LJ and Other News

[liz_marcs]

All previous posts related to the LJ Strikeout of 2007 can be found here.

Last post before I pass out....

First, Those LJ Alternatives

Insane Journal

(Personal account at liz_marcs)

bubble_blunder totally called this one. For my money the best of the alternatives. LJ interface on this one is exactly like LJ, minus the the touches SixApart additions.  If you were on LJ before the SixApart bought LJ, you'll find IJ very, very homey. Of all the options presented here, this one might be the best one to migrate to. What it lacks is critical mass. For a full list of what's available, go here.

Pros:

• Smooth running site
• Clean LJ interface
• Easily customizable (S2 is supported)
• Ability to PM someone
• It's not "communities," it's "asylums," damn it!
• We're all patients now
• Exhaustive FAQ that's easy to find
  
• Ability to upgrade via a paid account ($20 per year or $10 for 6 months)
  
• Permanent accounts are always available for purchase for $40 (yes, $30)
• Active ownership
• Syndication feeds

Cons:

• Critical mass? What critical mass?
• Free accounts are very limited: only 100 friends and 100 user pics allowed, tweaking of some basic designs allowed, ads (Firefox kills the ads, btw)
  
• Paid accounts are significantly enhanced: 800 friends, 250 user pics, fully customizable, no ads, text messaging to journal allowed, polls
  

GreatestJournal
(Personal account at liz_marcs)
I've had this account for about two years and haven't done much with it. I've backed up some stuff, but as usual kind of lost steam early on. Early sentiment seems to favor GJ as the alternative for fandom because it's somewhat familiar. Also, right now the site seems to be running a little bit on the clunky side.

Pros:

• All accounts are free
• There are ads, but they are kept off journal pages
• 2,000 user pics
• 1G photo hosting
• Voice posting
• Ability to post "testimonials" on friends' and community user info pages
• Ability to PM someone

Cons:

• Uses an older version of the LJ software
• Can be kind of creaky at times (Let's just say that the site seems to be on a slowdown right now)
• User support is somewhat spotty because it's all-volunteer
• The FAQ is a bit iffy
• No way to upgrade your services through supporting memberships or paid accounts

JournalFen
(Personal account scaryfairy)
This site is run by fans for fans. I've had this account for awhile, mostly so I could comment on the fannish communities there. My own journal is empty. This one uses an older version of the LJ interface like GreatestJournal and the fact that it's overwhelmingly dedicated to fannish pursuits puts it slightly above GJ.

Pros:

• It's a site run for fans by fans
• Three levels of accounts: free, paid, and premium
• Paid accounts available for $25 a year and include: 500 user pics, 2500 friends, text messaging, polls, and customizable styles
• Premium accounts available for $36 a year and include: 1,000 user pics, unlimited friends, text messaging, polls, and customizable styles
• Active ownership
• Very active membership

Neutral:

• Only people over 18 are allowed to have an account. Fans who engage in more adult fannish activities might like this fact. Under 18 fans aren't going to be happy.
• Much as I love JF, it can get a little wanky over there.

Cons:

• If you don't pony up the cash right away, someone with a paid account will have to invite you. Before you ask, no, I don't have a paid account. I got in just before JF made it hard to get a free account.
• Getting a free account is like winning the lottery. JF will occasionally open the floodgates and allow for free sign-ups, but that happens about as often as a lunar eclipse.
• JF servers have been a little cranky as of late as membership and commenting on the site have exploded.
• Can't find out if there are Syndication feeds
• The FAQ is...not helpful

In Other News...

• The folks over at dark_christian, a journal dedicated to tracking the Dominionist movement, has been all over our friends at Warriors for Innocence (deliberately not linked). dogemperor has been leading the investigation into finding out just who these people are. If you've been following the various links, the answer isn't exactly a surprise.
  
  
• Firefox News has two news articles on the SixApart/LJ debacle: The Purity Police and Fanfic and Six Apart Deletes 500 Journals, Many of them Fannish

• Oh, and we've been BoingBoinged

• And Farked

• And Slashdotted

• And Digg-ed

• And before I forget, Perverted Justice just threw up its hands and wondered aloud if SixApart/LJ knows the difference between real life and fiction. (Scroll down to see the rant.) Whoops!

• Just an aside: I want to ask SixApart/LJ, "Deleting all those journals...how's that working out for you?"

• Over at dw_news, the natives are getting restless and demanding answers. Thus far, we've got resounding silence. The newest post has already reached the max number of comments (5001). The online riot has moved to the next-newest post here and that's looking to reach 5001 posts as well.

• Don't forget to be counted at fandom_counts. By showing SixApart/LJ the sheer numbers of people who are in fandom, it's hoped that we can pressure our corporate overlords into addressing our concerns.

• fandompays is taking a survey. The main idea: are you willing to refuse to spend money and dump your account down to basic? Enough numbers could mean a chunk of change to SixApart/LJ, so fill out the survey. When I filled it out, I was in a more charitable frame of mind.
  

• fandomuhaul is offering to be a central location where people leaving LJ can leave a "forwarding address" or blog

• fandom_lawyers has a really good round-up of legal issues in this post.
  

• For more links and round-ups and information, trawl through my previous posts all tagged for your convenience.

I need to go get some sleep now...

Comments

[theentwife.livejournal.com]

There's another LJ alternative that I don't see on your list -- DeadJournal (). I've used that for years to host a blog (different from my one here).


Persephone

[theentwife.livejournal.com]

I included the URL for DeadJournal in my comment, but LJ doesn't seem to have included it in the finished reply, so here it is again:

http://www.deadjournal.com/


Persephone

[nocturnalista.livejournal.com]

A lot of people have said this, but thanks for doing all this research and reporting. Knowledge is indeed power.

[psubrat.livejournal.com]

Thank you for linking to Insane Journal and for listing the pros and cons. I really do like the interface better than GJ. And, oh, before I go any farther, I just wanted to let you know, that I've friended you all over the place. You did a bang up job with keeping everyone informed during Strikethrough '07 and I admire that. And I heard you had pr0n. Just kidding. Is there pr0n here? *g*

[mylexie.livejournal.com]

Hi!

Would you please add somewhere that I'm looking at options to set up a blog site in The Netherlands? This would not be based on US law, which means it'd be less restricted. Freedom of speech, fiction = fiction and all that. We'd start out for fandom specifically, so I'm tallying who might get a journal with us, and what the basic requirements would be. Would you be so kind as to fill out the poll (it's small!) and pimp it?
Thank you!

It's here! (http://mylexie.livejournal.com/159135.html)

[flaming-muse.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for keeping us all up to date over the past few days. We couldn't have put forth such an organized and strong response without you!

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Thank you SO MUCH for this clear, thorough rundown of options and the accumulated information.

You rock. I want to friend you, salute you, be like you, and nominate you for Fandom's Finest Citizen award. We need one. We have seen many hands-down candidates for such every year, none so many as in the last week, and none more qualified than you.

Thank you again.

/pine

[moss6886.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your posts about this mess. I'd been away from LJ for a couple of weeks, and came back Thurs evening to an overwhelmingly angry friends list. Your sane analysis (and thorough organization of links and information) was hugely helpful in navigating through the justifiable outrage.

Thank you.

[squeaky19.livejournal.com]

Hey,

I just want to point out to you, that we at IJ, actually stopped selling yearly accounts awhile ago. I forgot to pull it off of the journal creation page until yesterday (oops). Just don't want people to think that I am trying to bait and switch them.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I'll correct it, as soon as LJ let's me actually edit posts.

*kicks LJ*

Right now, I can post short replies, but that's about all I can do.

[squeaky19.livejournal.com]

That's lame. Guess they don't know how to deal with a DDoS

[faith-chaos.livejournal.com]

And this is why you're one of my favorite people!

[punchbutton.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you. I'd been out of fandom for years (just got busy with other things), come back and find that it's being systematically cut out of LJ? That's what LJ IS! And if these new moral landlords can't deal with that, then I'm out of here. Thank you so much for your research, because I can gurantee you I wouldn't have been able to do so good a comparison.

[gossymer.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if you could include tabulas.com (http://tabulas.com) as another viable option? It's not an LJ Clone but it includes most of the features (friends, friends of, communities etc.) and more (hit counts, far more specialization and most available completely free of charge). THe layouts are also a damn sight better and easily customizable. (Someone's blog there (http://tabulas.com/~eirene83/) + my own blog here (http://www.tabulas.com/~gossymer/))

Someone's blog there (http://tabulas.com/~eirene83/) + my own blog here (http://www.tabulas.com/~gossymer/).

I can't help thinking moving to an LJ Clone would make fandom less shiny because the clones don't really match up to LJ in features available at present. Moving to something that offers blogging +communities might be a better option...

[ghostinthemist.livejournal.com]

Hmm, thanks for this! I'll look into it. Bless you for replying!

[vass]

If you were on LJ before the SixApart bought LJ, you'll find IJ very, very homey.

*quietly* Unless you have a problem with their using mental illness as a gimmick. If it was just the name, I'd dismiss it as ignorance and bad taste. But it's more pervasive. Instead of comms, they have asylums, users are called inmates, and then there's their names for paid/permanent/early accounts, and I... I'm wary about complaining, not least after watching people jump up on down on Zvi for taking issue with an ism everyone *knows* is bad, but I feel like I have to say something, because psych hospitalisation is just not a joke, and mental illness is not happyfunlifestylechoice, and Twitchy the mascot is ugly to me in ways that have nothing to do with his appearance.

If other people who feel less strongly about that (or who feel otherwise) decide that that's less important than InsaneJournal's advantages, I'll understand that. I'm tempted myself. But even if the rest of fandom *does* migrate there, I'll go somewhere else. (And probably comment using OpenID, as a wishy-washy compromise, but I'm just *not* getting an account there.)

[vass]

Sorry, I just realised how old this post is. I saw it linked from another post about the current round of deletions. I didn't meant to come out of the blue like that.

[qem_chibati]

I don't know if you ever got the answer to this but.

You can syndicate Journalfen journals elsewhere and;

Paid accounts can syndicate journals on there as well. I think to do that you need to fill out the priority support form.

I don't know if they have a list of syndicated journals, but they do exist and you can use them.

[falseaidoru.livejournal.com]

This is terribly random and quite late, but should you ever edit this entry or update for any other mass move or anything, I just wanted to make sure you knew GJ is in the crapper. Well, in and out of it rather. Private Messaging is gone. Picture hosting is gone. Last I heard new accounts are no longer available. Not quite as huge, but notable I think is the icon count. It keeps fluctuating between 100 and 10. The volunteers that have been trying to keep people updated have told everyone that System, the creator or whatever, has not spoken to them in years.

So yeah, I know this is old but I found it while googling "I need a site like greatestjournal" and thought I'd mention it in case similar googling brings you other visitors. For my purposes, this was actually very helpful still!