Webware

Google on Friday released an open-source project, Google Blog Converters, intended to help people move their blogs from one service to another.

There are a number of popular publishing systems for housing blogs, some of them services and some of them software people can run on their own servers. But if you want to change infrastructure, it's rough going. Information isn't necessarily locked up and inaccessible, but the practical barriers of moving it to a new publishing system are high.

Google, which actually has a "data liberation team," announced the Blog Converters project to deal with the situation. It released a collection of libraries and scripts, written in the Python language, that converts between the export formats of LiveJournal, MovableType, WordPress, and Google's own Blogger service, said J.J. Lueck of the team in a blog posting about the Blog Converters project.

That means that a person could convert an exported file into a format another blog system comprehends, permitting the data to be imported into the new system. That could make it easier for a person to move to Google's own service--but also to move off it.

Of course, you'll have to be proficient in running Python scripts to use the technology. But it could get easier soon: Google said the scripts can be hosted on Google App Engine, its service for running Web-based applications written in Python, so perhaps somebody will set up some tools to make blog migration easier for the non-programmers out there.

Future versions of the technology will support the BlogML data format and a mechanism to synchronize blogs with services that have an API (application programming interface) for accessing data but not import-export abilities.

Google added an import-export feature to Blogger in December. The company's "don't be evil" slogan got its start in a discussion about the company's commitment not to lock up people's data such as e-mail archives.

Social-media pioneer LiveJournal is the latest company to announce a round of layoffs, trimming down its employee head count in its San Francisco and Moscow offices.

A statement from the company came after a rumor on gossip blog Gawker suggested that a shocking number of LiveJournal employees--20 out of 28--had been cut. LiveJournal clarified that it was "about a dozen" cuts, amounting to about a fifth of the company.

"LiveJournal Inc.'s headquarters, technical operations (and servers), legal, administration, and the customer service teams will remain in the United States," the release explained. "LiveJournal's global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office. The pooling of resources between the U.S. and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal."

Yahoo veteran Matthew Berardo, who was hired as general manager of the service less than a year ago, was affected by the layoff.

LiveJournal was founded nearly a decade ago by OpenID creator Brad Fitzpatrick, who sold the company to blog software firm Six Apart. But that led to widespread reports of management difficulties, and late in 2007, Six Apart resold LiveJournal, phenomenally popular in Russia, to the Moscow-based software company SUP.

Longstanding social network LiveJournal published a report Friday that asked its users what makes the site unique. Written by a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Culture, and Communication department at New York University, the report contends that a defining characteristic of LiveJournal users is their "passion" for connecting with others. "LiveJournal's feature set encourages real, engaged, committed, long-term interaction with the site and friends met through the site, creating passionate users who care deeply about LiveJournal," the report said. Unfortunately, many of those "passionate" users seem to be moving to Facebook at a rapid rate.

News discovery service Socialmedian announced Friday that it has been acquired by XING, a business social network that has proved extremely successful in Europe. According to the company, Socialmedian's founder, Jason Goldberg, will relocate to XING's headquarters in Germany and take on the role of vice president of application platform. Socialmedian will stay a standalone service and remain under the creative control of Goldberg and his team.

Yahoo made an interesting announcement Friday, saying it has acquired a 30 percent stake in Network Management Company, an India-based telephone information service. The company did not give any reasons why it has decided to take a stake in the 411 service or if it has plans to expand it internationally to compete with Google's own 411 offering, but Network Management's CEO, T.S. Narayanaswamy, claims Yahoo's funding will create a "world class" team at the firm.

Starting Friday, GreatAmericans.com, a site that tries to inspire Americans through role models in the Armed Forces, is providing users with an opportunity to send recorded celebrity messages of thanks to loved ones serving the country in uniform. The site features messages from a number of "celebrities", including John Ondrasik, the founder of the band Five for Fighting; and Kim Cameron, lead singer of the Side FX Band. Visitors to the site can view celebrity messages, enter the name and information of their loved one, and send the thanks directly to them. The site also allows users to upload video of service men and women.

I'm a social-networking addict. I'm never away from my Twitter stream, I always check Facebook for friend updates, and Friendfeed is probably my favorite Web tool this year. I check out Hi5 to catch a glimpse into the future, head back to Friendster from time to time, and can't help but check in with LiveJournal every few months when I feel nostalgic.

But for all that work with social networks, I've also become a somewhat critical and cynical user. And anyone who suffers from my same addiction probably has as well. That's why I've compiled this list of some of the most annoying social-networking quirks that affect us all.

Constant Updates

Sometimes, updates get to be a bit too much. It's not that I don't like them--I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to--but when I'm constantly inundated with new relationship status updates, virtual good purchases, and status updates, it gets overwhelming.

Thankfully, many social networks allow their users to control what kind of updates they receive, but even then, it's tough to decide what you should and shouldn't see. Maybe you don't want relationship status updates for everyone, but there are a select few that you do want updates about. Worse, status updates need to be kept on, but for some, you wish it was turned off. It's an awkward balance, but changing content settings usually helps. I spend most of my time in those settings prior to using any service before I get going.

Fail Whales

I realize the term "Fail Whale" really only pertains to one service--Twitter--but it does get annoying when any social network is down. Granted, many of these issues happen when a social network is in its infancy, and over time the sites become more reliable. But again, as a social-networking addict, I find myself using new social networks each day and downtime is a constant occurrence.

(Credit: Twitter.com)

During the first four months of 2008, Twitter experienced uptime of just 98.72 percent, for a grand total of 37 hours and 16 minutes down. Bebo was down for 14 hours during the same period and Hi5 trailed slightly behind with 13 hours of downtime. More popular sites like Facebook and MySpace kept downtime to under three hours.

Am I the only person who's annoyed by that? I realize maintaining a popular service isn't easy and scaling is a major issue, but more uptime means more user satisfaction, which is a key component in the success (or failure) of any social network.

Inordinately long beta periods

Beta periods are important to the growth and development of any social network. I'm a firm believer that, when used properly, they help the company find lingering issues to fix before the network goes live to an even larger community. Even better, they do a fine job of creating a viral-marketing campaign through beta testers who are impressed with the service and share that sentiment with friends who cannot yet access the site.

But sometimes, beta periods get a little out of hand. To me, a beta period that lasts too long tells me that the company knows there are problems and is simply unwilling, or unable to rectify them. So in order to cut down on negative feedback, it keeps the site in beta when it shouldn't be.

Maybe management forgot to take the beta sign down or its waiting for a special moment. Regardless of the reason, the longer a service is in beta, the sooner I lose confidence in it.

The fight with size

I hate to say it, but sometimes, social networks are too big. Try finding your friend with a unique name on Facebook or MySpace and you probably won't have too much trouble--there aren't that many people named Apple out there. But if you try to find your old friend Tom Smith, you'll probably have more trouble finding him than you should. Sure, there are advanced search options that try to help you narrow it down by location, but what if you don't know? After college, he went his way and you went yours. The chances of you finding him are slim. And as Facebook and MySpace add more users, it's even getting difficult to find less popular names. You wouldn't believe how many people on Facebook share my last name.

But it's not just trying to find old friends that can get frustrating. When you want to add an app to Facebook, it's almost impossible to find exactly what you're looking for without searching multiple times. Due to the incredibly high number of apps on the service, simply inputting, "card game" isn't going to cut it. I'm all for having more apps and widgets on social networks, but don't you think it could be arranged better to reduce search time? I'm guessing that would make the entire community much happier.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

There are several media-pushing services represented at the opening of the iTunes App Store, each with their own combination of supported sites. ShoZu (covered here) remains the whopper of them all with support for roughly 30 popular social sites and services. There are the major players, of course--Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, Blogger, Picasa, LiveJournal--but ShoZu isn't too high and mighty to upload text and images to some of the more niche guys, like Box.Net qipit, Snapfish, and SmugMug.

With so many services ready to cram into an app interface, things could get tangled up fast. But they don't, partly due to the iPhone's nice big screen and partly due to a structure designed to keep order. Frequent uploaders can automate multi-platform-pushing by going online and adding up to 10 child services to be copied each time media is posted to the parent service.

My biggest gripe? That while you can sign up for a ShoZu account from the iPhone itself, you have to visit the Web site to arrange for multi-pinging. It's the glue that ties ShoZu together for many users, and is something they'll need to add to truly be a standalone app on the iPhone.

LiveJournal, the blogging platform that was a few years ahead of its time, announced Thursday that it has appointed Matthew Berardo, most recently the senior director of international business and product management at Yahoo, as its vice president and general manager.

Berardo had been at Yahoo for years, seven of which were spent in its London office at Yahoo Europe. A new senior management team has been brought on board along with him, which includes former employees of Expedia, virtual worlds developer Millions Of Us, and telephony start-up Jangl. Berardo will report directly to SUP CEO Andrew Paulson.

Founded in 1999 by OpenID creator and current Googler Brad Fitzpatrick, LiveJournal was acquired in December by the Russian media company SUP after a stint as a property of Bay Area software company Six Apart. The nearly three years of Six Apart ownership didn't go too well, insiders explained, and a new buyer was sought out. Considering nearly 6 million of LiveJournal's 20 million users are in Russia, SUP made sense; LiveJournal remains headquartered in San Francisco.

LiveJournal, the popular blogging platform/social network from Six Apart, has been acquired by Russian media company SUP. While financial details about the acquisition have not been disclosed, in today's press announcement Chris Alden, CEO and Chairman of Six Apart said the move "...is a great milestone for LiveJournal and also lets us to focus on the core products invented at Six Apart: Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox."

LiveJournal is the first English site in SUP's portfolio, which has a sports news service and two different Internet marketing agencies for audiences in Russia. The two companies partnered in late 2006 to provide better language support and localization for Russian users of LiveJournal (the service's second biggest userbase), and today's acquisition is the second change of hands for LiveJournal after Six Apart acquired it from founder Brad Fitzpatric in early 2005.

Current LiveJournal users shouldn't be too scared about the transition. According to this news post from the company, all of the Six Apart employees who were working specifically on the LiveJournal property are now a part of LiveJournal Inc. The company is also using now as a chance for users to revamp the site policies, along with the feature roadmap.