Interview with SUP president.
Here is an chat with SUP's president, Andrew Paulson, which occurred last December.
Many of the questions are about business or other topics, but some relate to LJ. I'll cut and post some remarks he made that do have to do with LJ.
ЖЖ=LJ
"The most important thing we are and have been trying to do with ЖЖ is to improve it without changing it. In fact, I think that Russian ЖЖ is far closer to the model that we are looking for than ЖЖ in the U.S., which has been a bit overtaken by other services in recent years. There we want to clearly differentiate it from MySpace and Facebook; ЖЖ is about "community", "content" and "controversy". A good way to demonstrate this is that there is nothing to "google" in MySpace or Facebook because there is not much content there, whereas a very large percent of ЖЖ traffic comes from search engines. This is a big difference that we want to develop not only in U.S., but all over the world, using the ЖЖ communities that already exist in almost every country as a starting point."
"How exactly to make social networks and user generated content sites successful advertising platforms for any given product, then, simply requires trial and error and measurement. This is what we are doing with both Victory S.A. which is a client facing agency and with +SOL which sells high quality traffic from many sources; we are providing our clients not just with the advertising space, but also with the tools for measuring the result of each campaign."
"I think that ЖЖ and Championnat and +SOL and Victory S.A. are already very well set up in Russia, so you wil see some completely new projects coming from SUP in 2008. LiveJournal in America has gone through several years of neglect and we hope that by the end of 2008 it will be healthy and growing and the users will be complain less and be able to enjoy life in their wonderful garden a bit more. The biggest challenge that we are looking at in the near future is developing ЖЖ outside of Russia and the U.S., in Europe, in the Middle East, in China, and becoming a truly great, truly international media company coming out of Russia."
My comment: It is interesting that he describes LJ as having been "neglected" over the past few years.
"I always believe that actions are stronger than words. For the last year we have had no problems in Russia either with users or with the government regarding free speech in ЖЖ. I don't see why it should begin now."
"I hear that our software development team is the best in Russia now; and certainly they will remain here (soon there will be 100 of them and it would cost too much to move them to America). We may have a small team of developers in San Francisco which might have some skills which would complement our Russian team. However, the servers will remain in America."
My comment: One hundred developers? That's a lot.
Many of the questions are about business or other topics, but some relate to LJ. I'll cut and post some remarks he made that do have to do with LJ.
ЖЖ=LJ
"The most important thing we are and have been trying to do with ЖЖ is to improve it without changing it. In fact, I think that Russian ЖЖ is far closer to the model that we are looking for than ЖЖ in the U.S., which has been a bit overtaken by other services in recent years. There we want to clearly differentiate it from MySpace and Facebook; ЖЖ is about "community", "content" and "controversy". A good way to demonstrate this is that there is nothing to "google" in MySpace or Facebook because there is not much content there, whereas a very large percent of ЖЖ traffic comes from search engines. This is a big difference that we want to develop not only in U.S., but all over the world, using the ЖЖ communities that already exist in almost every country as a starting point."
"How exactly to make social networks and user generated content sites successful advertising platforms for any given product, then, simply requires trial and error and measurement. This is what we are doing with both Victory S.A. which is a client facing agency and with +SOL which sells high quality traffic from many sources; we are providing our clients not just with the advertising space, but also with the tools for measuring the result of each campaign."
"I think that ЖЖ and Championnat and +SOL and Victory S.A. are already very well set up in Russia, so you wil see some completely new projects coming from SUP in 2008. LiveJournal in America has gone through several years of neglect and we hope that by the end of 2008 it will be healthy and growing and the users will be complain less and be able to enjoy life in their wonderful garden a bit more. The biggest challenge that we are looking at in the near future is developing ЖЖ outside of Russia and the U.S., in Europe, in the Middle East, in China, and becoming a truly great, truly international media company coming out of Russia."
My comment: It is interesting that he describes LJ as having been "neglected" over the past few years.
"I always believe that actions are stronger than words. For the last year we have had no problems in Russia either with users or with the government regarding free speech in ЖЖ. I don't see why it should begin now."
"I hear that our software development team is the best in Russia now; and certainly they will remain here (soon there will be 100 of them and it would cost too much to move them to America). We may have a small team of developers in San Francisco which might have some skills which would complement our Russian team. However, the servers will remain in America."
My comment: One hundred developers? That's a lot.