Random Russians

[desperance]

LJ has a 'random journal' feature in its toolbar; out of boredom curiosity, I hit it three times in succession. And got three Russian journals in succession. I don't suppose that's enough of a statistical universe to draw any conclusions, but I don't think I'll bother again. Russian not being one of my languages.

Comments

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

Well, the Russians now own it, and it is very popular with Russian language bloggers (just ask cinderberry).

[tavella.livejournal.com]

The Russians buying it is a consequence, rather than a cause of the popularity -- the English part of the operation is becoming more and more an appendix. It's kind of like how Orkut is hardly used as social software but anyone but Brazilans these days.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Really? I hadn't realised the bias fell that way. Well, no reason to, I guess. The two populations must be almost totally distinct; I do have a handful of Russian friends here, but only because they speak English. Damn being monoglottal...

[elsue.livejournal.com]

Huh.

I'd never noticed that feature, but I just tried it. Got three Russians, kept going, started getting about 1 in 3 in English. Including one where the blogger had about a week ago asked experts for answers to a question I need to research (is monitor calibration worth bothering about?).

Freaky.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

People I know who've tried it have gotten as much as 90% Russian.

Which makes the whole "LJ Advisory Board" thing kind of pointless.

We Anglophones are totally irrelevant to LJ.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

So I'm discovering. I really hadn't realised. *is was innocent*

[(Anonymous)]

Well I'm not monolingual but ne govoriju po-russki. (which I think is Russian for 'I don't speak Russian' - might be better as ne znaju russki jazyk - 'I don't know the Russian language'). In a way it's quite good having a niche product that at the same time is widely supported somewhere else - unlike F'book it isn't instantly recognisable by people reading over your shoulder, f'rinstance, and there is less spam and bad reputation. For a while my primary email address was Swiss - at Bluewin.ch. It did reduce the amount of english-language spam, which is most spam, although my Gmail address gets Spanish-language spam.

[camies.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was me, forgot to log in.