Dreamwidth Timeline

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Expand: This should be a timeline of DW's conception. Should probably also include LJ actions as well that drove DW's formation.

A more complete history of LJ can be found on this timeline of LiveJournal.

LJ History

1999

  • 1999-03 -- [info]brad starts LJ

2001

2003

  • 2003-02-05 -- [info]bradfitz announces strict by-day rate limiting on entries (to curb a spammer influx).
  • 2003-02-05 -- Over the next few days, users react to the user impact of strict rate limiting of entries (including entries to communities), with over 2000 comments on the first news post and 1,000-some on the second.
  • 2003-02-07 -- [info]bradfitz says "I would never advertise on LJ. That's so 1994."
  • 2003-03 -- LJ clone JournalFen is started
  • This is also the year that fandom_wank is TOSed from LiveJournal, TOSed from Blurty, and ends up at JournalFen.

2004

2005

2006

  • 2006-04-18 -- Introducing a new account level -- The introduction of Sponsored+, later to become Plus. This account level includes advertisements.
  • May/June -- Breastfeeding strike
  • 2006-09-26 -- Sponsored Content -- Sponsored accounts and features come into being
  • 2006-10-18 -- LJ and SUP -- Six Apart turns over the Russian side of LJ to SUP

2007

Early 2008

Pre-Dreamwidth -- ie, Hypothetical Journal

March 2008

April 2008

May 2008

Dreamwidth Development

June 2008

July 2008

August 2008

  • 2008-08-08 -- First quote in #dw IRC QDB -- A quotes database for Dreamwidth's IRC channels is opened on qdb.zhzh.org, and the first quote appears. (QDB is later moved.)

December 2008

January 2009

  • 2009-01-06 -- The Grim Purge -- LJ lays off half of the San Francisco office employees, including the entire design team. Dreamwidth kicks into high gear:
  • 2009-01-07 -- GreatestJournal dies completely, after having limped along in zombie form for the past six months.

Dreamwidth Begins

2009

February 2009

March 2009

April 2009

(lots of missing stuff goes here)

  • 2009-04-30 -- Open beta launch.

(lots of missing stuff goes here)

May 2009

(lots of missing stuff goes here)

June 2009

July 2009

August 2009

September 2009

October 2009

November 2009

  • 2009-11-02 -- dw-news update: 1500 resolved bugs; icon limits increased; post-by-email to all users; latest page created; Mark tries NaNoWriMo; posting in dw_codesharing opened to non-members: http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/13432.html
New icon limits
Free accounts: 15 icons
Paid acounts: 100 icons
Premium paid/Seed accounts: 250 icons

December 2009

2010

January 2010

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6939/1/

February 2010

March 2010

April 2010

May 2010

(Some time around here-ish Mark takes a day job working for StumbleUpon.)

June 2010

July 2010

August 2010

  • 2010-08-21 -- Inksome announces a net loss from 1 May 2010 to 31 July 2010: "... we're losing money again. ... a difference of $178.50 ... cannot afford that kind of loss every month. Unless account revenue improves soon, I will be forced to shut down the site." http://www.inksome.com/users/news/13110.html
  • 2010-08-31 LiveJournal rolls out r69, with Twitter and Facebook integration, most notoriously including ability to easily send links with quotes of locked content to Twitter and Facebook, and a re-implementation of pingbacks that sometimes shared large excerpts of locked content with people not authorized to see it.

September 2010

October 2010

  • 2010-10 -- Mark and Janine announce their separation.
  • 2010-10-21 -- Denise & Sarah begin the process of purchasing a house.

November 2010

December 2010

  • Denise & Sarah moving house, spotty internet access
  • 2010-12-10 -- Inksome's financial troubles continue: "... we are very likely still going to be going dark come April, because we have not made any progress where it comes to turning a profit." http://www.inksome.com/users/news/13421.html
  • 2010-12-24 - "Sad Project News" Cross-site reading tabled until factors making it impossible change. http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/27853.html

2011

January 2011

February 2011

March 2011

April 2011

Post-Beta

October 2011

November 2011

  • Late November -- LiveJournal under heavy DDoS attacks with phishing, suffers downtime

December 2011

  • Early December -- LiveJournal under heavy DDoS attacks, suffers downtime, crossposting affected
  • -- Elections in Russia
  • Open account creation period starts
  • LJ's R88
  • Spike in traffic/new users
  • 2011-12-25 -- community import bug committed

2012

January 2012

  • Community imports
  • SOPA/PIPA protests: splash screen (minimal interference with site as it is a communications platform)
  • 2012-01-19 -- #dw-tmi unofficially revived

February 2012

March 2012

  • The Support High Scores Board spills onto a second page, meaning that more than 100 different volunteers have answered support requests since Dreamwidth's creation.
  • Replaced reCAPTCHA with Text Captcha

May 2012

July 2012

  • Dreamwidth sponsors a group of developers to attend OSCON, marking the beginning of an annual conference tradition. The first rough implementation of image hosting capability is made available.

2013

January 2013

April 2013

  • Added ability to reply to comments by email, and public subscription filters.

June 2013

  • Dreamwidth's yearly conference for 2013 is YAPC::NA in Austin, Texas. Mark, Denise, and Kat present talks about diversity, attracting and retaining volunteers, and self-care.

September 2013

November 2013

  • Development begins on implementing next-generation responsive design using Foundation/SCSS.

2014

March 2014

April 2014

June 2014

  • 2014-06 -- Dreamwidth's yearly conference is Open Source Bridge for 2014. A number of Dreamwidth people give presentations.
  • Beginning of deployment of Foundation-styled pages. First to be converted is the community admin area, followed by journal styles.

2015

February 2015

June 2015

  • 2015-06-20 to 2015-06-23 -- Open Source Bridge is again Dreamwidth's yearly conference. Dreamwidth brings 12 people officially, a number of whom speak. There are also a number of Friends of Dreamwidth. Presentations_and_Publications#2015_June
  • 2015-06-26 -- [info]fu steps down as employee, intends to return as a volunteer (after getting on board at new job)

July 2015

2016

June 2016

December 2016

2017

February 2017

March 2017

April 2017

May 2017

  • Imzy announces shutdown for the end of June; some Imzy users retreat to Dreamwidth to regroup and keep community ties at [info]imzy.

September 2017

  • Dreamwidth switches to using Cloudfront for network resilience, and turns on the use of HTTPS everywhere across the site.

2018

December 2018

2019

April 2019

2020

2021

2022

The Future

  • Cross-site Authenticated Reading List Tabled until factors making it impossible regarding LJ change, as of 2010-12-24: http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/27853.html
  • Entry creation out of beta/edit redesign
  • Photo/image hosting (currently in beta) finished Feb 2017
  • Further work on redesigned client API
  • Continued open account creation, unless spam, performance, or some other reasons force it to be turned off!