Dreamwidth is an online journal service based on the

LiveJournal LiveJournal (russian: Живой Журнал), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as ...

codebase In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code files; thus, a codeb ...

. It is a

code fork In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

of the original service, set up by ex-LiveJournal staff Denise Paolucci and Mark Smith, born out of a desire for a new community based on open access, transparency, freedom and respect. Dreamwidth was announced on 11 June 2008, went into open

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

on 30 April 2009, and quietly got taken out of beta on 30 April 2011.

Features

For the most part, features are similar to those of

: users have journals, where they may post entries, each of which has a webpage of its own, and on which other users may comment. Dreamwidth also provides shared or group journals called "communities". Areas in which Dreamwidth differs significantly from LiveJournal include the following:

Accounts

Initially, Dreamwidth accounts could only be created with an invite code. In December 2011, invite codes were turned off, originally as an experimental temporary measure. As there was no significant increase in spam accounts and the servers were adjusted to handle the load, the invite codes were not turned back on at the start of the new year as planned, and new users can still create an account without the use of an invite code. Free accounts have limited features. Paid accounts exist on two levels, "Paid" and "Premium Paid", and have additional features. At the time of the open beta launch, a limited number of Seed Accounts were also available.

User relationships

In response to criticisms of LiveJournal's friending system, Dreamwidth has split user relationships into two parts: subscriptions and access control. Users may subscribe to other users' journals or grant access for other users to read locked entries as separate actions. Dreamwidth's terminology reflects this split: for instance, the "friends page" has been renamed as "reading page", and "custom friends groups" has been split into "access filters" and "reading filters".

Interoperability

Dreamwidth provides greater interoperability with other LiveJournal-based sites, including the ability to import a journal from another site, crosspost to multiple sites, and greater functionality for users who log in via

OpenID OpenID is an open standard and decentralized authentication protocol promoted by the non-profit OpenID Foundation. It allows users to be authenticated by co-operating sites (known as relying parties, or RP) using a third-party identity provider ...

Search

In addition to the search facilities brought over from LiveJournal, paid account users can search their journal. This was introduced on 24 July 2009.

Advertising

LiveJournal was initially free of advertisements, but gradually incorporated them, until by 2017 ads were shown to all non-paid readers on all pages. Dreamwidth remains free of advertisements.

Features

The following features, available on LiveJournal, are not available on Dreamwidth: * S1 style system * to-do lists * TxtLJ * pingbacks * nudge *

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...

music detection * singles * commenting using

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

and

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

accounts Despite the lack of these features, Dreamwidth is acclaimed for its strong community and transparency.

Development

Dreamwidth is based upon the

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

and

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

that was designed to run LiveJournal. It is written primarily in

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...

. The majority of the Dreamwidth code is available under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

for other sites to use. Unlike many other social networking sites using the LiveJournal codebase, such as InsaneJournal and

DeadJournal LiveJournal (russian: Живой Журнал), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, a ...

, Dreamwidth is a

, removing unwanted features (such as advertising) and adding new ones as described above. Founders of the site rejected the advertising model as intrusive. Instead, they implemented a payment system, where users can purchase add-on or premium features. A 2009 OSCON presentation saw Dreamwidth identified as highly unusual among open-source projects, for the number of women on its development team. About 75% of its developers are female, compared with around 1.5% in the field as a whole. Paolucci and Smith also spoke at

linux.conf.au linux.conf.au (often abbreviated as lca) is Australasia's regional Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different Australian or New Zealand city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by lo ...

2010 about Dreamwidth's development model and have been invited to speak at Web 2.0 Expo and OSCON about their techniques. Dreamwidth was accepted as a GSoC mentoring organization for the summer of 2010. They were allotted seven students, who worked on a variety of projects.

Staff

Athena, also known as Afuna or fu, was introduced as the site's first paid employee on 7 April 2010. On 7 September 2010, Mark Smith announced that he had stepped back from Dreamwidth's front line and moved to work for StumbleUpon. He is still an owner of Dreamwidth along with Denise, however.

Influence

Following the positive reactions to Dreamwidth's diversity statement and model of inclusiveness, various other projects have followed suit, including

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

's diversity list and Dreamfish.

References

External links

* {{Official website, name=Dreamwidth official website
A Guide to Dreamwidth for LiveJournal users

Dreamwidth Notes: dwscoalition wiki
Blog hosting services Blog software Community websites Free web software Internet services supporting OpenID American social networking websites Software forks Companies based in Baltimore

Features

Accounts

User relationships

Interoperability

Search

Advertising

Features

Development

Staff

Influence

See also

References

External links