So Om Malik has posted a report that Om Malik on Broadband » Six Apart is going to buy Live Journal, and the whole blogosphere is afire with the news. What gets me is that I don’t really see the point – if 6A gobbles up the LJ community, the only major advantage I can see would be to use it as a source of revenues, but if they impose stricter pricing or whatever, the backlash could be huge.
On the upside, I would let loose a long, loud, evil cackle if my LJ friends (Aaron, Nick, Aurelia, Ariel, Ryan, SarahScott, Megan, Evangeline, Carol and Judy) are all suddenly brought kicking and screaming into the Movable Type empire. Now, I rather doubt that a 6A/LJ merger would involve LJ suddenly using a TypePad backend, but it’s certainly possible.
A better question is, what functionality would this bring to Movable Type / TypePad? Communities? A slightly smoother and more spam-free commenting system (sorry, Jay)? At the moment I’m admittedly at a loss.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
