Year 2009 in Russian LiveJournal

Year 2009 in Russian LiveJournal (LJ)
commentator40 wrote:

A year ago, on Dec. 20, 2008, I began to make measurements of growth of LJ. I started doing it without any scientific or practical purposes. I just wondered how actively the network is developing, and I began to fix some parameters on monthly basis.

Last year growth was as follows:

The total number of LJ-accounts (“journals”) in Russian part of LJ grew from 1509251 to 2520621 (+67%).

The number of LJ-accounts, added to others friend-lists by ten or more LJ-users rose from 318,815 to 657,276 (+106%). As we can see, these accounts make only about a quarter of the total number of LJ-accounts. In my point of view these are the LJ-accounts that generally speaking it makes sense to speak about. They have some sort of content that at least someone seems worthy of attention. And the other 1.8 million-plus accounts - are mostly advertising accounts (robots - «bots»), abandoned resources and LJ-accounts of those users who do not spend efforts to maintain their own “journals”, and simply continue reading and commenting on other people's posts.

The number of LJ-users “journals”, added into the friend-lists by hundred and more LJ-users rose over the year from 53,010 to 88,507 (+67%). It's like a "salt of the earth", the middle class of LJ on which the social network is kept. These LJ make as we see, about 1 / 30 of the total number. Growth rate in this segment is approximately the same as in the whole LJ. And as for bots and "cheaters of the counter", which give a huge increment in some LJ-segments, normal people, of course, can not keep up.

Number of "thousand-ers," grew in a year 2009 from 1350 to 2984 (+121%). Here was rapid growth, at least half of which was provided according to my observations of the businessmen- «cheaters of the counter", i.e. users who try to earn through advertising on their blogs very straightforward. They by any means need need to secure a large number of “friends”, high attendance and high number of comments on their posts. Otherwise they would not be enough interesting for advertisers. So they try to reach this goal by means of mutual adding into “friends”, mutual "linking" and using other methods of artificial cheating the indicators. Due to their efforts of the concept of "thousand-ers," during the past year, virtually became worthless. With the help of two or three mass mutual friends campaigns it is possible in principle to become a technical "thousand-er," even when the specific LJ is completely empty.

But becoming a "Ten-thousand-er" (a LJ-user with 10.000+ friends) using such artifices is (so far) impossible. ”Ten-thousand-ers" are powerful and original LJ's targeted to their audience, which gives them the confidence to increase more rapidly than the average for LJ. It is due to the accuracy and quality, I guess. These users if they earn on their journals, do it using the more subtle methods than the mass of those who shove advertising in LJ's. Leading LJ's are the leaders at the sight/ Any promotional "artificiality" would be immediately noticeable. The number of ”Ten-thousand-ers" for the year 2009 increased from 11 to 29 (+164%). About them - a little more ...

Three leaders of the rating on LJ "zafrendu" for the year has not changed, only the second and third are reversed:
LJ user “drugoi», an increase from 26933 to 43004 (+60%).
LJ user “tema», an increase from 23422 to 42636 (+82%).
LJ user “e_grishkovets», an increase from 24298 to 33084 (+36%).

Of those who were a year ago in the list of first twenty, 14 remained there. These (in addition to the above-mentioned three) are “doctor_livsy” (old LJ of a writer Sergei Lukyanenko), «dolboeb», «katechkina», «stillavinsergei», «mi3ch», «kitya», «tanyant», «zhgun», «tebe_interesno», «shenderovich», «marta_ketro». Well, only some have changed their places.
The six newcomers into the top-20 - «sergeydolya», «pesen_net», «radulova», «vero4ka», «olegtinkov», «belonika».
It is particularly interesting phenomenon of two businessmen. LJ-account «sergeydolya» was established in November 2007 and, in general, initially did not attract much attention. However, over the past year, the owner-entrepreneur has made a giant leap. He began to post interesting photo reports on his travels around the world. He has enough money to get into very exotic places of the planet, the materials are really interesting, so that, in my opinion, the success of the magazine is well deserved. Now this account is at the 4 th position (approx. 21 thousands of “friends”) and it rapidly reduces the lag from the first three LJ's.
Journal «olegtinkov» a year ago did not yet exist at all (it was created February 2009). This LJ drew attention to itself almost immediately after the appearance, in September it broke into the top twenty, and now it reached the 15 th position in the rating (13850 of “friends”) and it steadily continues to rise. Oleg Tinkoff, in contrast to the "traveler" Sergei, writes about business, about money, and this is interesting.