Open Diary

Last updated
Open Diary
Opendiarylogo.jpg
Type of site
 Blog Social Network
OwnerBlather, Inc.
Created by Bruce Ableson
URL www.opendiary.com
CommercialYes
LaunchedOctober 20, 1998;25 years ago (1998-10-20)
Current statusre-launched in 2018

Open Diary (often abbreviated as "OD") is an online diary community, an early example of social networking software. It was founded on October 20, 1998. Open Diary went offline on February 7, 2014, [1] but was re-launched on January 26, 2018. The site was owned and operated by Bruce Ableson and Susan Ableson, known on the Open Diary website by the title of their diaries, The DiaryMaster and The DiaryMistress. [2] [3] Ableson has described Open Diary as "the first web site that brought online diary writers together into a community." [4]

Contents

Open Diary has hosted more than five million diaries since it was founded, [5] and was home to over half a million diaries. As of October 2008, there were over 561,000 diaries on OpenDiary.com, [6] including diaries from 77 different countries and all 7 continents. [7] The site innovated some key features that later became central to the architecture of other social networking and blogging sites, including reader comments and friends-only privacy.

History

Open Diary went online on October 20, 1998. Shortly afterwards, the site added the ability for readers to post comments on others' diary entries – an innovation that was the forerunner of the interactive nature of today's blogs and blog comments. [8] [9] Early features of the site included public or private diary entries, indexes of diaries by age and geographic location, and a "Favorites" page for the diary owner. The Favorites page was used to aggregate information about the latest posts of the user's friends, and was a predecessor of the friends lists and "friends-only" privacy options used by many blogging and social networking sites today.

In late 1998, the site was featured as a Yahoo! Pick of the Week [8] and membership increased rapidly, growing to more than 10,000 diaries in the first six months. In 2000, Ableson created two related websites: Teen Open Diary (in January), and Quit Smoking Diary (in April). [10] A September 7, 2000 feature article in USA Today described Open Diary as "the Internet home of more than 130,000 personal online journals," in addition to the more than 25,000 diaries hosted on Teen Open Diary and the more than 1,700 hosted on Quit Smoking Diary. [11] The article describes the demographics of the site as 75% female, with more than half of all diarists being 21 years old or younger.

On November 2, 2000, the Diary Circles feature was added to the site. [12] Diary Circles provided a common space where members could cross-post entries from their diaries related to specific topics. The most popular circles include "Depression", "Relationships", "Poetry", "Love & Passion", and "Advice Wanted". [13]

Two diarists posted entries while on assignment at McMurdo Station, Antarctica [14] during 2001 – possibly making Open Diary the first online community to have people writing from all seven continents.

Open Diary introduced the premium service Open Diary Plus in 2001, a paid version of the original Open Diary. In addition to freedom from advertisements, Open Diary Plus offered several new features, including the ability to block specific users from reading the diary and the ability to organize the diary into chapters. [15] The free and paid versions of the site were temporarily separated into FreeOpenDiary.com and OpenDiaryPlus.com. The two sites were later recombined, with free and paid memberships both remaining available at OpenDiary.com. [16]

A major upgrade to the Open Diary software was released in September 2003, adding the "Favorites Only" (later Friends Only) option for diary access, private notes, member interests, and other features. [17] At the end of 2003, there were over 218,000 diaries active on the site. [18]

During 2004, privacy options on the site were further expanded, allowing users to set individual entries as "Favorites Only" [19] and selecting who could read Favorites Only entries on a person-by-person basis. [20] On September 11, 2004, the site was subjected to a major hacking attack, during which the site's databases were accessed and several weeks of diary entries were erased.

In April 2005, a new diary interface was added, giving users the option of including profile pictures and lists of their interests and favorites in their diary pages. [21] A Lifetime Membership level of paid subscription was added in February, 2006, granting Open Diary Plus privileges for the life of the site for a price of $100 USD (raised to $150 in 2009). [22] A need for additional revenues to cover server and security costs resulting from the 2004 hacking attack was cited as the reason for adding this option.

Teen Open Diary and Quit Smoking Diary were discontinued in May 2006, and members were given the option of transferring their diary to the main Open Diary site. [23] Also in 2006, the OD Boards were added to the site, a set of community forums that were moderated by volunteer Open Diary members. [24]

In February 2008, new administrative volunteers were added to the staff to help with technical support, rules monitoring, and communications with the users. [25] On October 20, 2008, the site celebrated its tenth anniversary online. [26]

Open Diary 6.0, a broad upgrade to the site, was released on February 23, 2009. [27] This version included a new interface, new navigation, picture storage for Plus users, entry tagging, and several more new features.

On May 29, 2009, an additional version of the site optimized for mobile devices was released. [28]

As of spring 2012, the site's helpdesk software was taken down due to lack of funds, leaving the administrators fewer tools to communicate with users and provide service.

On January 28, 2014 it was announced that Open Diary was shutting down within two weeks.

On February 7, 2014 the site went offline at 12:02 AM EST. The associated Facebook page and Twitter account were also taken offline at the same time.

On October 19, 2017, the Open Diary Outage Board (ODOB) [29] posted that the site went into testing mode for a new service. In its FAQ page, [30] Open Diary promises to start a new subscription-only mode this year (according to the ODOB, on New Year's Eve (in another post of the same day)). Old members are promised to be notified once the site is ready to serve diarists. According to the site, all diary entries from when the site shut down have been preserved.

Open Diary re-launched publicly on January 26, 2018, offering a reclaim mechanism for ex-members to regain access to their diaries. Open Diary now functions as a subscription website, with the first thirty days free and then a $3.99 (USD) per month subscription after that.

Features

Open Diary allowed users to create diaries that are public, private, or friends-only. Within a diary, individual entries were either public, private, or friends-only, if the level of overall diary privacy allowed it. Users were able to post an unlimited number of entries in their diaries.

Diary entries on the site accepted user comments, which were linked back to the noter's diary. Notes left on diaries were either set to public or private (only visible to the entry author), and diaries were set to accept anonymous notes from people outside of Open Diary, or from members only.

The Diary Circles feature provided a place where diary entries of a similar nature could be posted together. These circles were linked to the Open Diary Boards, a message board component that was added to the site on April 27, 2006. [24]

Entries recommended by Open Diary users were listed on the Reader's Choice page. Users created a "favorites" list bookmarking other diaries of interest. They added a list of "interests" to their profile, and search for diarists who have expressed interest in a particular topic.

Open Diary also provided a free email service, which was not limited to Open Diary members. [31]

Security

The Open Diary website was the victim of two major hacking attacks.

On September 11, 2004, the Open Diary database server was hacked, resulting in the loss of eleven weeks worth of diary entries for all members. Bruce Ableson offered a cash bounty for information leading to the arrest of the hacker, and the FBI was involved in the investigation. [32] On February 2, 2006, Ableson introduced $100 Lifetime subscriptions, stating that this new membership level was created to raise money after declining subscription rates in the period following the 2004 hacker attack caused Open Diary to go into debt. [22] Lifetime members were told they would be given extra features, communication, and consideration beyond the OD Plus level. However, as of Spring 2012, these subscriptions are no longer available due to lack of responsiveness from site administrators.

On August 28, 2008, Open Diary was again hacked. Ableson took the site offline, with a message on the front page stating that there had been a security breach and the email addresses and passwords of some users had been compromised, but that no diary content had been lost. The site went back online on August 29, with a post from Ableson stating that over 2,000 users' email addresses and passwords had been compromised by a script exploiting a weakness in the site's security. [33] Affected users were assigned temporary passwords and notified by email.

Related Research Articles

In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but could refer to any piece of equipment or functional unit that is connected to a larger system. Being online means that the equipment or subsystem is connected, or that it is ready for use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LiveJournal</span> Russian social networking service

LiveJournal, stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities. In January 2005, American blogging software company Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive, the company that operated LiveJournal, from Fitzpatrick.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet forum</span> Online discussion site

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes publicly visible.

iMesh File sharing client

iMesh was a media and file sharing client that was available in nine languages. It used a proprietary, centralized, P2P network (IM2Net) operating on ports 80, 443 and 1863. iMesh was owned by American company iMesh, Inc., who maintained development centers around the world. As of 2009, it was the third most popular music subscription service in the US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xanga</span> Blogging and social media website dissolved in 2013

Xanga was a website that hosted weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles. It was operated by Xanga.com, Inc. and based in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yahoo! Mail</span> American email service

Yahoo! Mail is an email service offered by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! Small Business brand, before it transitioned to Verizon Small Business Essentials in early 2022. Launched on October 8, 1997, as of January 2020, Yahoo! Mail has 225 million users.

Evernote is a note-taking and task-management application developed by the Evernote Corporation. It is intended for archiving and creating notes with embedded photos, audio, and saved web content. Notes are stored in virtual "notebooks" and can be tagged, annotated, edited, searched, and exported.

An online diary or web diary, is a personal diary or journal that is published on the World Wide Web on a personal website or a diary-hosting website.

A password manager is a computer program that allows users to store and manage their passwords for local applications or online services such as web applications, online shops or social media. A web browser generally has a built in version of a password manager. These have been criticised frequently as many have stored the passwords in plaintext, allowing hacking attempts.

A Google Account is a user account that is required for access, authentication and authorization to certain online Google services. It is also often used as single sign-on for third party services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outlook.com</span> Microsoft webmail service

Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. This includes a webmail interface featuring mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Outlook can also be accessed via email clients using the IMAP or POP protocols.

MobileMe is a discontinued subscription-based collection of online services and software offered by Apple Inc. All services were gradually transitioned to and eventually replaced by the free iCloud, and MobileMe ceased on June 30, 2012, with transfers to iCloud being available until July 31, 2012, or data being available for download until that date, when the site finally closed completely. On that date all data was deleted, and email addresses of accounts not transferred to iCloud were marked as unused.

LastPass is a password manager application. The standard version of LastPass comes with a web interface, but also includes plugins for various web browsers and apps for many smartphones. It also includes support for bookmarklets.

A recent extension to the cultural relationship with death is the increasing number of people who die having created a large amount of digital content, such as social media profiles, that will remain after death. This may result in concern and confusion, because of automated features of dormant accounts, uncertainty of the deceased's preferences that profiles be deleted or left as a memorial, and whether information that may violate the deceased's privacy should be made accessible to family.

The 2011 PlayStation Network outage was the result of an "external intrusion" on Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, in which personal details from approximately 77 million accounts were compromised and prevented users of PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles from accessing the service. The attack occurred between April 17 and April 19, 2011, forcing Sony to deactivate the PlayStation Network servers on April 20. The outage lasted 23 days.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LulzSec</span> Hacker group

LulzSec was a black hat computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from PlayStation Network in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. Some security professionals have commented that LulzSec has drawn attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks. One of the founders of LulzSec was computer security specialist Hector Monsegur, who used the online moniker Sabu. He later helped law enforcement track down other members of the organization as part of a plea deal. At least four associates of LulzSec were arrested in March 2012 as part of this investigation. Prior, British authorities had announced the arrests of two teenagers they alleged were LulzSec members, going by the pseudonyms T-flow and Topiary.

<i>We Are Legion</i> 2012 American film

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists is a 2012 documentary film about the workings and beliefs of the self-described "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous.

Penzu is a private online diary-hosting website. Users can create written entries similar to a standard personal journal and can also upload photos from their devices. Penzu uses a freemium business model with special paid features including unique fonts, AES encryption, rich text formatting, and others. As of 2014, the website had over 1 million users in 170 countries worldwide.

In July 2015, an unknown person or group calling itself "The Impact Team" announced they had stolen the user data of Ashley Madison, a commercial website billed as enabling extramarital affairs. The hacker(s) copied personal information about the site's user base and threatened to release users' names and personal identifying information if Ashley Madison would not immediately shut down. As evidence of the seriousness of the threat, the personal information of about more than 2,500 users was initially released. The company initially denied that their records were insecure, and continued to operate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Have I Been Pwned?</span> Consumer security website and email alert system

Have I Been Pwned? is a website that allows Internet users to check whether their personal data has been compromised by data breaches. The service collects and analyzes hundreds of database dumps and pastes containing information about billions of leaked accounts, and allows users to search for their own information by entering their username or email address. Users can also sign up to be notified if their email address appears in future dumps. The site has been widely touted as a valuable resource for Internet users wishing to protect their own security and privacy. Have I Been Pwned? was created by security expert Troy Hunt on 4 December 2013.

References

  1. ↑ Seminario, Maria (1998-12-01). "Open Diary takes off". ZDNet.
  2. ↑ Bruce Ableson's Open Diary page
  3. ↑ Berman, A.S. (2000-09-07). "Open Diary lets people anonymously bare their souls". USA Today . pp. 03.D.
  4. ↑ Loughnane, E. (2005-03-18). Net Success Interviews. Lulu.com. ISBN   1-4116-2698-2.
  5. ↑ "Journaling a tool for writers".
  6. ↑ Open Diary main page counter
  7. ↑ Open Diary geographic index
  8. 1 2 Seminario 1998.
  9. ↑ "What is a blog? How the technology shapes the medium". The Daily Telegraph. London. January 22, 2009. Archived from the original on June 6, 2012. Retrieved May 20, 2010.
  10. ↑ Berman 2005.
  11. ↑ Berman 2000.
  12. ↑ OD Announcement of Diary Circles (November 2, 2000).
  13. ↑ Open Diary Circles page.
  14. ↑ Net Success Interviews (March 18, 2005).
  15. ↑ Open Diary Plus features
  16. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Freeopendiary.com (February 23, 2004).
  17. ↑ The DiaryMaster – OD 4.0 and Some Questions (September 10, 2003).
  18. ↑ Internet Archive (December 25, 2003).
  19. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Favorites Only Entries (March 22, 2004).
  20. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Allowing People (or not) to Read Faves Only (May 28, 2004).
  21. ↑ The DiaryMaster – New Diary Layout Online (April 20, 2005).
  22. 1 2 The DiaryMaster – Please Help OD (February 2, 2006).
  23. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Teen Open Diary Import (May 25, 2006).
  24. 1 2 The DiaryMaster – Open Diary Boards (April 27, 2006).
  25. ↑ The DiaryMaster – New Support Staff (February 7, 2008).
  26. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Happy Birthday OD! (October 20, 2008).
  27. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Welcome to OD 6.0 (October 20, 2008).
  28. ↑ "The DiaryMaster - OD Mobile Beta Release". www.opendiary.com. Archived from the original on 13 November 2012. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  29. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/odoutageboard/ [ user-generated source ]
  30. ↑ "FAQ – Open Diary".
  31. ↑ Open Diary Free Email
  32. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Back in Business (September 14, 2004).
  33. ↑ The DiaryMaster – Password Problems (August 29, 2008).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.