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This post misses the main reason LiveJournal is a niche site today: they were invite-only for years. LJ had severe performance issues during the first couple of
by gamble 18y ago
This post misses the main reason LiveJournal is a niche site today: they were invite-only for years. LJ had severe performance issues during the first couple of years, and to keep the system usable during that period new accounts could only be created if you procured an invite from an existing user. By the time they fixed the problems and removed the invite system, LiveJournal had been eclipsed by the growth of other social-networking sites.
- randomwalker 18y agoThey opened up to the public in 2003, which is when I signed on. They had memcached by then. My analysis is about the last 5 years. Other social networking sites did exist, but they didn't let you blog or read feeds. LJ had something unique.
- gamble 18y agoUnfortunately, MySpace started up about six months before LiveJournal removed the invite system, and clobbered LJ by seeding themselves with 20 million accounts on the first day. At that time the demographics for MySpace and LJ were roughly the same, and most people simply followed their friends onto MySpace. The coup de grace came a month after the invite system was removed, when Facebook was launched. I'm not saying that the invite system was the only mistake they made, but it cost a year or two of lead time and allowed competitors with much deeper pockets to make up the gap.