Dreamwidth
Encyclopedia
Dreamwidth is an online journal service based on the LiveJournal
code. It is a code fork 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 and went into open beta on 30 April 2009.
: 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:
.
and open source server
software that was designed to run LiveJournal. It is written primarily in Perl
. The majority of the Dreamwidth code is available under the GPL for other sites to use.
Unlike many other social networking sites using the LiveJournal codebase, such as InsaneJournal and DeadJournal, Dreamwidth is a code fork, 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
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.
. He is still an owner of Dreamwidth along with Denise, however.
LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
code. It is a code fork 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 and went into open beta on 30 April 2009.
Features
For the most part, features are similar to those of LiveJournalLiveJournal
LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
: 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
Free accounts may only be created with an invite code, and 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 OpenIDOpenID
OpenID is an open standard that describes how users can be authenticated in a decentralized manner, eliminating the need for services to provide their own ad hoc systems and allowing users to consolidate their digital identities...
.
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.Missing features
The following features, available on LiveJournal, are not available on Dreamwidth:- picture hosting
- voice posting
- S1 style system
- to-do lists
- TxtLJ
- pingbacks
- nudge
- Last.fm music detection
- Singles
- Commenting using Facebook and Twitter accounts
Development
Dreamwidth is based upon the freeFree software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and open source server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
software that was designed to run LiveJournal. It is written primarily in Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
. The majority of the Dreamwidth code is available under the GPL for other sites to use.
Unlike many other social networking sites using the LiveJournal codebase, such as InsaneJournal and DeadJournal, Dreamwidth is a code fork, 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
O'Reilly Open Source Convention
The O'Reilly Open Source Convention is an annual convention for the discussion of free and open source software. It is organized by the publisher O'Reilly Media and is held each summer in the United States.-Notable events:...
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
linux.conf.au is Australasia's regional Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by local volunteers....
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
Google Summer of Code
The Google Summer of Code is an annual program, first held from May to August 2005, in which Google awards stipends to hundreds of students who successfully complete a requested free or open-source software coding project during the summer...
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 April 7, 2010. On September 7, 2010, Mark Smith announced that he had stepped back from Dreamwidth's front line and moved to work for StumbleUponStumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.Toolbar versions exist for...
. 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's diversity list and Dreamfish.See also
- Comparison of sites using the LiveJournal codebaseComparison of sites using the LiveJournal codebaseThis is a comparison of sites publicly accessible on the internet known to be using the LiveJournal codebase.The LiveJournal web community is based on open source software for blogging and social networking, primarily written in Perl. Because of this, many other communities have been designed using...
- List of social networking websites