LiveJournal
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
LiveJournal (LJ) is a blogging platform that has been running since 1999. The unit of content here is not a short note but an entry in a personal journal or in a community: a long text with a title, tags, pictures and comment threads. The platform describes itself as “a collaborative publishing platform that deliberately blurs the line between blogging and a social network”.
The operator is a Russian legal entity. The user agreement names the administrator directly as Rembl Internet Holding LLC / SIM Limited Liability Company and states that the service is governed by the law of the Russian Federation, with disputes heard at the place of the administration's registration. For international social media work this is the first thing to take into account: the legal perimeter is Russian, not American, even though the domain and the interface are global.
What sets LJ apart from most platforms in this guide is privacy of entries at the level of the individual post and of friend groups, a living system of communities with moderation, and the fact that a post here is indexed by search engines by default. In exchange the platform offers almost no algorithmic distribution: growth comes through communities, mutual subscriptions and paid promotion.
Who's here
The page about the project carries only one audience number — “more than 50 million journals”; the date on which it was counted is not stated, and it refers to journals rather than to living users. This is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent measurement.
On the same page the platform describes country differences qualitatively, without numbers: it claims that in Russia more than 80 of the 100 most popular Russian blogs are on LJ, that in the United States topic-based communities are more active, in the United Kingdom entertainment ones, and in Singapore group buying. The "80 out of 100" estimate is given with no methodology and no date, so it cannot be relied on for planning.
Languages. A switcher for interface versions works on the front page, livejournal.com.
Getting started
Registration is free and is done from the front page — livejournal.com offers to create an account and start a journal. No document verification is required. The agreement sets an age threshold: the service may be used by persons aged 14 and over.
There is no separate "business account" with company checks on LJ. The role of a corporate platform is played by a community — a journal with several authors, an owner, moderators and, if desired, a pre-moderation queue. The second route is an ordinary journal with a styled design.
The paid tier is called the Professional package. The platform confirms that a basic journal can be used free of charge, while Professional is a separately purchased package with a term of validity. There is a third, almost inaccessible tier as well — Permanent: the same page calls it rare and usually available to employees and long-standing volunteers.
What you can publish
The formats are text with HTML markup, images, video and audio through embeds, tags, polls and cuts. The platform has tags of its own: for example, <lj-like> adds repost buttons to an entry for Twitter, Tumblr, WhatsApp, Telegram and Pocket, plus an internal repost.
The platform names the size limits precisely: an entry is limited to 65,535 bytes. In the Latin alphabet that is about 65,000 characters, while for Russian and Japanese text the FAQ explicitly states a range of 21,000–33,000 characters, because a character takes two or three bytes. HTML markup counts towards that size too. An avatar (userpic) must be JPEG, GIF or PNG, no more than 100 pixels on each side and no more than 100 KB.
What is forbidden is listed in the agreement: material on the sexual exploitation of children, instructions for making drugs, promotion of suicide, extremist material, pornography, violence, and material that offends human dignity and public morality.
How to grow
There is no algorithm in the usual sense
The platform does not describe a recommendation feed. In its place two mechanisms of its own operate — a rating and paid promotion.
Social capital is an internal measure of influence. The platform explains that it is calculated from the number of people who have added the journal as a friend, the age and activity of the account, comments in other people's journals, how often you sign in and other markers that distinguish a living user from a bot. Empty, inactive and suspected-automated accounts are not counted and do not affect anyone else's rating. The measure works only for those who have switched ratings on in their privacy settings and connected the Cyrillic services.
Promo is paid promotion. The mechanics are an auction: the platform states that all promotion slots start at 50 tokens, bids go in steps of 50 tokens, and a winning bid gives 1 hour of display on the front page and on the ratings page. If your bid is outbid, part of the sum is returned in proportion to the unused time. Only public entries may be promoted; a journal already in the top 10 most popular may not be promoted. Advertising and commercial promotion inside the promoted entry are forbidden.
Statistics
Extended journal statistics are part of the Professional package — the platform lists them among the tier's features alongside the absence of advertising, 100 GB for photographs and custom styles.
Path to monetization
There are no direct payouts to authors from the platform, nor an ad revenue sharing programme. The platform explains that advertising is shown to support the running of the site and that the only way to remove it is to change the account tier. That is, advertising here is an author's expense, not their income.
The only built-in flow of money from reader to author is LJ Give. The platform describes it like this: every press of the LJ Give button transfers 10 tokens to the author, and the button does not appear by itself — the author has to insert it into the entry with a tag.
Tokens are the internal currency. The platform's shop explains that LJ Tokens are bought by card, through PayPal, YooMoney and WebMoney in packages of 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 15,000 and 30,000, and that when transferring them to another user 5% is withheld on sums above 20 tokens. They are spent on the Professional package, on design and on virtual gifts. The platform describes no reverse exchange of tokens for money — this is an internal currency for spending, not for payouts.
The price of the paid tier is named in the FAQ: 1399 ₽ a year, and this price is available only if automatic payments are set up; a one-off purchase goes through the shop for tokens or by Visa, MasterCard, Maestro or Mir card. The same page says that the service is not transferable to another person and is non-refundable. The FAQ page is marked with an update date of 11 February 2022, so the price is worth rechecking in the shop.
Tools and automation
Official access
LiveJournal has a client-server protocol of its own. The documentation lists four interfaces: the "flat" one, its own XML-RPC, the Atom API and a modified version of the Blogger API, and recommends XML-RPC as the simplest, or flat if you are writing the wrapper yourself.
The set of XML-RPC methods covers nearly everything scheduling and exporting need: postevent and editevent for publishing and editing entries, getevents and getdaycounts for reading, syncitems for synchronizing changes, editfriends, getfriends, friendof and editfriendgroups for connections, getusertags for tags, and login and getchallenge for authentication; requests go to the server's /interface/xmlrpc section.
An important caveat. The FAQ on third-party clients gives the addresses /interface/atom and /interface/blogger/, but accompanies them with a plain note: the information is out of date and the capabilities described are no longer supported. Compatibility with the Atom and Blogger APIs is called a beta version "as is" on the same page, and the platform declines to support third-party clients. The platform's own protocol carries no such note, but it too is documented in an old section.
Export
Export exists, but it is inconvenient. The platform describes it honestly: export goes one month at a time, in CSV or XML format, comments are not included, and the resulting file cannot be loaded back into your own journal or into another account. For moving to another platform this means manual work or your own script on top of getevents.
Third-party services
The major schedulers offer no confirmed support for LiveJournal: the Onlypult platforms page lists sixteen platforms, and LiveJournal is not among them. The practical conclusion: scheduling on LJ will most likely have to be built on your own code on top of XML-RPC.
Limits and rules
- Age. From 14 years.
- Entry size. 65,535 bytes; for Cyrillic that is roughly 21,000–33,000 characters.
- Userpic. Up to 100×100 pixels and up to 100 KB.
- Friends. With the Professional package — up to 2,000 in the friends list instead of 1,000 on the free tier.
- Rights to your content. The author grants the platform a non-exclusive (simple) licence to use their content for the running of the service and its promotion; the administration has the right to modify, shorten and de-personalize material when the author takes part in ratings and editorial projects.
- Data retention. Under Federal Law No. 149-FZ the administration stores data about correspondence for a year and hands it over to authorized bodies on a lawful request.
- Inactivity. An account not used for more than two years may be deleted; one deleted at the owner's initiative is restorable within a year.
- Consumer law. The agreement separately states that consumer protection laws do not apply, since the service is provided free of charge.
Who it's for
Suits long texts and topic-based communities with live discussion: the entry-with-comments format and fine-grained privacy settings are worked through better here than on most platforms in this guide, and a post is indexed by search engines. Suits Russian-language projects: the platform itself ties its Russian audience to the "Cyrillic services", to which the rating and promotion are attached.
Suits those ready to write code: XML-RPC gives publishing, editing, reading and synchronization with no application review.
Does not suit you if you are counting on earning from the platform itself: there are no direct payouts, and the only built-in transfer from reader to author — 10 tokens per press of LJ Give — arrives in an internal currency with no described route out into money. Does not suit you if you need an algorithmic inflow of new audience: the platform does not promise one, and offers you growth for purchase at the Promo auction. And it does not suit projects for which the operator's Russian jurisdiction and the data retention requirements of Law 149-FZ are unacceptable.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself as follows: «Your life is the best story! Just start your blog today!»; on the home page — «Discover global communities of bloggers who share your unique passions and interests»
The platform's own claim
source, checked 2026-07-28
Getting started
registration is free: the home page carries a «Join free» button; you can sign in with a login and a password
source, checked 2026-07-28
Content
the catalogue's topic sections: Belarus, business, everyday life, «do it yourself», mushrooms, artificial intelligence, cinema, coronavirus, beauty and health, culture, science and technology, politics and society, entertainment, family and children, lifestyle, taste, around the world
The composition is taken from the /category/ links on the front page
source, checked 2026-07-28
besides journals there are communities (Communities), a feed of RSS subscriptions (RSS Reader) and a shop (Shop)
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the language switcher offers nine interface versions: English, Russian, Ukrainian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian and Belarusian
The composition is taken from the list on the front page
source, checked 2026-07-28
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