There are several servers in the Internet which make creation of a personal blog available but the resource Livejournal.com which is translated into Russian as jivoy jurnal or simpler JJ is the most popular among Russian Internet users.
It is known that the journal was founded in 1999 from its history. This fun (from nothing to do) was created by an American programmer- student Brad Fitzpatrick. Much of a sudden this kind of intercourse started developing and the Internet users from other countries have engaged in it as well. The first note in Russian in Livejournal appeared in 2001 and professor from Tartu University Roman Leybov became the first Russian-speaking user. Having tried a curious thing of the Internet, Roman involved all his friends in the world of Livejournal.
By the way, the audience of Russian segment of Livejournal greatly differs from that of American. In American segment personal diaries are mainly created for social intercourse, the authors write about particularly personal live experiences. As a rule, American LJ users have a restricted circle of readers consisting of their relatives and friends. Meanwhile, quite another situation is observed in Russian segment of LJ. Here they discuss news, events in the world and country, share political viewpoints as well as write analytical articles on different themes.
And if in the US mainly teenagers are involved into blogs, but in Russia besides many journalists, popular artists, writers and poets, scientists, experts, there are politicians and even large businessmen among users of LJ.
Similar occurrence is mostly connected with recent time free speech being seriously corrected in Russia. It was left neither on TV, radio nor in newspapers.
However, necessity in it has not been exhausted and people of Russia have taken a fancy to such a place as LJ in the Internet for their opinions and ideas realization, where nobody is empowered to restrict freedom of speech. That is why at present Russian-speaking segment of Livejournal has become quite a curious discussion area.

Elina Bilevskaya