my thoughts on selling out
It's funny to me that so many people were surprised that Brad sold LJ. And to be clear: Brad sold LJ, it wasn't just "acquired" by somebody. We've talked about selling LJ for years, and I'm happy that it finally happened. (Note: I wasn't involved in any of these discussions. I'm flattered you thought to ask me about the rumors, but you ought to keep in mind that I work one of LJ's main competitors -- I regularly chat with the Blogger folks at work -- and I'm as in the dark about LJ plans as the rest of you.)

I think everyone projects their love of LJ into a love of Brad; since you don't know him you fill in the missing parts with your wishes. I do the same, but I also get to see more of him than you do.

The truth is he hated a lot of LJ because he had to do everything. When I think back to school all I can remember is him being grumpy about it -- the late nights he'd have to skip studying to fix the site, the legal problems with users -- and was only happy when he'd have an idea for a cool new feature to hack. I remember talking in his car on a trip from Seattle to Portland and him excitedly spelling out an idea for a (completely unrelated) project he had, and then dejectedly saying, "but I have to work on LiveJournal."

Brad's a hacker, not a social network theorizer nor a businessman. He's done a passable job at the latter two but I attribute LJ's success to a lot of happy accidents. (I wish I could play back for y'all the long discussions I've had with danah over the past two days. She studies this sort of thing.) LJ's growth forced him to give up the aspects he enjoyed.

So take selling as a given. When we had discussed selling in the past, it seemed there were two main ways to go about it:

1. Jump ship. Sell to e.g. Microsoft for as much cash as possible and run. (For example, I'd imagine that Yahoo is looking to get into blogging...)
2. Try to fix things. Get somebody else to do the parts you dislike while continuing to work on the parts you like.

It appears to me he chose the latter; the reports indicate he took stock and that Six Apart doesn't have that much cash. I can't think of a better company to have merged with that better represents the second option (and in fact, I had brought them up before as a company to talk to).

I sincerely believe:

• That the LJ staff is happy with this. (That is, they're not just getting paid to make happy statements.)
• That the Six Apart people are not stupid. Anybody who thinks they're going to immediately fuck up the community or try to force people to switch software or anything like that is being hysterical and irrational.
• That the pairing is a good one. As snej observes, Six Apart is notorious for making well-designed / user-friendly interfaces, which is one of LJ's weakest points, while LJ has some seriously awesome technology. (This is the reason I had brought up Six Apart before. Also, I like what little I know of the owners.)

However, I and I think everyone else are still a little frightened about it all. Hysteria aside, there are some real problems that I don't think will be solvable:

Capital-F Free software. LJ is a service and can afford to give away the code, while MT can't and so they have some reportedly fucked-up licensing scheme that everyone hates them for. I don't know how I feel about this; I like to think I am a Believer in free software (of anyone affiliated with LJ, I'm pretty sure I've contributed the most to non-LJ free software projects) and all of that but I also appreciate people's desire to eat.

The relationship between volunteers and employees of the site may become even weirder. I still don't think anyone understands why people volunteer for LJ in the first place aside from their love of LJ. LJ was a business before, and now it's, uh, a different business, I don't think anyone understands how the volunteer opinion may change with this.

Changes to the guiding principles which are primarily lawyerese CYA but all show the fundamental shift happening. It's entirely possible that marketing managers will decide to slather LJ with ads, or sell email addresses, or whatever. But in truth that doesn't make any sense, even from a marketing position (again, be careful with the hysteria), because the users will hate you for it.

There is, however, the possibility of more gradual changes -- even simply cultural ones that cannot be controlled by technology -- that ultimately have the same effect. I don't think Brad would have agreed to all of this if he didn't believe they would do it. But ultimately for that, as he wrote, the only thing we can do is wait and see.