LiveJournal announces an ambitious India strategy
Entry with exciting Flash Fiction Contest along with Caferati; Short story contest promises exciting cash prizes; Contestdesigned to showcase best of Indian user-generated content to global audience
-- LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com), the leading global online community blogging platform, today announced its first India project with the launch of Quick Tales -the LiveJournal Flash-Fiction Contest along with Caferati, one of India’s most vibrant and well-known literary communities.
This competition has been conceived to support Web users in India who share a passion for creative writing and want to use LiveJournal to both widen their audience and raise their profile. This writing contest will be the first opportunity for Indian web users to engage with a LiveJournal project specifically designed for India. The contest builds on the initial work which the LiveJournal team in India have been doing for the past three months.
LiveJournal has established a reputation across the globe for generating and supporting high quality user-generated content published in user’s personal journals or in interest-based communities.
In India, LiveJournal has identified three key ingredients required to develop its user base in the country, over the long term:
1. Socialisation – LiveJournal is different, in that it is a platform for words and pictures that can be shared and discussed with ease.
2. Integration –LiveJournal should be accessible through any number of platforms.
3. Localisation – Anyone who is online in India should be able to use LiveJournal. This means proper translation and multilingual interfaces
This contest forms the first part of the strategy. In the months to come the LiveJournal team in Delhi, San Francisco and Moscow will be developing plans for localisation and integrations. LiveJournal have also launched a community (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_india/) for users in India to express their views about how they would like their platform to develop.
Andrew Paulson, Chairman of the Board of SUP, the owners of LiveJournal globally, said “India was our first port of call after we acquired LiveJournal last December. We already have a great reach in many online markets and have a small but loyal following in India. This project sees us, for the first time, actually trying to support the growth of new local communities in India. LiveJournal already has over 16 million accounts today and I am hoping that it won’t be long before there are many more of these coming from India.”
LiveJournal in India currently has 900,000 page impressions a month; 5000 unique monthly users and 13,000 registered accounts, all of which promise to see exponential growth post the roll-out.
Globally, LiveJournal is a service that offers tools and enablement for sharing of content and building communities around this content.
Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Director of Corporate Development, SUP, added “India offers strong opportunities for growth as LiveJournal seeks to expand upon its global reach.”
“LiveJournal is a natural platform for creating and sharing meaningful content around literature, activism, education, news and politics. Quick Tales - Flash Fiction Contest is the natural first step for us to seed many such initiatives and communities in India,” he concluded.
The Contest
Quick Tales -the LiveJournal Flash-Fiction Contest (for stories up to 500 words long) is open for participation to anyone with a mailing address in India, from 11 August – 7 September 2008 and is themed around the word “Journal.”
The top 5 winning entries take home cash prizes of Rs. 19999, Rs. 16000 and Rs 12000, Rs. 8000 and Rs. 4000, respectively. Each of the 100 short-listed entries will also be highlighted on the India Writing Community (http://community.livejournal.com/india_writing/ )on LiveJournal, where the contest is hosted, ensuring global visibility. Short-listed stories may also be featured in a book that LiveJournal plans to publish at a later date.
Peter Griffin, Co-Founder & Joint-Editor, Caferati said “Flash Fiction, also called micro-fiction, short-shorts, and many other names, demands that the writer tell a story with all the classical elements - a beginning, middle and end, a conflict and resolution, a credible protagonist - but within a very limited number of words, which may mean that these elements are implied rather than made explicit. It is an ancient form, but has grown hugely in popularity in these attention-deficit times, with the growth of the Internet. If standard short fiction is like a one-day international, think of the Quick Tales Contest as the 20–Twenty of contemporary story-telling!”
The contest, timed to be part of India’s Independence Day celebrations, will take India across continents with the LiveJournal Home Page marking events in India, cross-promotion across LiveJournal and outreach through Caferati’s communities and social media.
Notes to Editor
About LiveJournal Inc.
LiveJournal is one of the world's most respected community publishing platforms. Since its launch in the United States in 1999, LiveJournal has become the online home to a wide array of creative individuals looking to share common interests, meet new friends and express themselves. LiveJournal encourages community and personal expression by offering users both a user-friendly interface and the ability to deeply customize their journal. The site allows users to set up their own virtual diary and communicate with their friends by posting and receiving comments on each other's entries. In many countries the site's most popular functionality is the community aspect which allows users to engage each other on issues of common interest.
LiveJournal has registered more than 16 million accounts since its founding, and currently has a worldwide monthly audience of 20 million of whom 5.7 million are Russian based (Omniture, TNS Gallup). LiveJournal Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.livejournalinc.com
About SUP
SUP is an international online media company with established partnerships with businesses across the globe. SUP was founded in the summer of 2006 by an international management team with Russian seed capital. SUP set itself the goal of building a portfolio of high-traffic-generating projects based in Moscow from which to expand worldwide. SUP has offices in Moscow and San Francisco. SUP's five key businesses are:
SUP Media
- Championat.ru, the most popular online-only sports news site in Russia;
- Gazeta.ru, a Russian online newspaper covering politics and business. Gazeta.ru was acquired by SUP in June 2008 from Kommersant Publishing House;
- LiveJournal.com, the most popular blogging platform and social network in Russia, and one of the most respected community publishing platforms worldwide. It was originally run under license in Russia before it was acquired outright in December 2007. LiveJournal has over 16 million accounts worldwide and continues to add more than 200,000 every month;
SUP Advertising
- +SOL, a media sales house which acts as SUP’s internal commercial department and sells online advertising for a number of high profile Russian and international Web sites (Yahoo!, Last.fm, BBC, and The Times among others). +SOL's partners include Mindshare Interaction, Zenith Optimedia and Optimum Media OMD;
- Victory S.A., a full-service online advertising agency which devises and delivers online marketing campaigns for leading Russian and international brands.
Editorial queries: Mr. Sreekar Reddy / Vishal, brand-comm 98661 10032 / 98855 85802