<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Live Journal was sold off to a Russian company a few months back, and is now beginning to flesh out its high level positions, namely its board members.  This is par for the course, especially when a company with a large existing international user base is already established, and the company moves from the hands of an entity in one country, over to another.  \nWe mentioned Live Journal's appointment of its new board members, which includes Live Journal founder Brad Fitzpatrick, danah boyd, Esther Dyson, and Lawrence Lessig, and we also mentioned that Live Journal would be reserving two seats on its board for Live Journal users.  Those Live Journal users that are interested in being a board member can click here for more details.  This allows a smoother transition as Live Journal is now member to a new parent company, and of course, represents the interests of the users.  \nThis is particularly important as SUP has already changed around a few guideline policies for use of its service, which mainly revolve around the topics of \"non-photographic images of minors, harassment, inappropriate content, and hate speech,\" according to Live Journal.  There are already community features built into Live Journal that account for the many comments, questions and complaints that users have for Live Journal, but some elected user representatives will hopefully keep any actual decisions for Live Journal relevant to its growth and support in the coming months.  \nLive Journal  will be holding two separate elections in order to make sure that the selected board members reflect a cross-section of Live Journal's larger user base.  One election will be for the Cyrillic language users of Live Journal, and the other election will be for non-Cyrillic users (that boils down to a Russian user representative, and a non-Russian user representative).  \nThe interesting aspect of this particular tactic is how it can also be used as an establishing move in SUP's shifting of  Live Journal over to a Russia-based company, while still keeping its ties to its original user base as well.  Should such international representation be present for all online communities seeking global expansion?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/03/12/live-journal-user-board-members/>