Released on: August 11, 2008, 6:56 am

Press Release Author: Brand-comm.com

Industry:

Press Release Summary: - Entry with exciting Flash Fiction Contest along with
Caferati.
- Short story contest promises exciting cash prizes.
- Contest designed to showcase best of Indian user-generated content to global
audience

Press Release Body:




Chennai, 11 August 2008: LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com), the leading
global online community blogging platform, today announced its first India project
with the launch of Quick Tales -the LiveJournal Flash-Fiction Contest along with
Caferati, one of India's most vibrant and well-known literary communities.

This competition has been conceived to support Web users in India who share a
passion for creative writing and want to use LiveJournal to both widen their
audience and raise their profile. This writing contest will be the first opportunity
for Indian web users to engage with a LiveJournal project specifically designed for
India. The contest builds on the initial work which the LiveJournal team in India
have been doing for the past three months.

LiveJournal has established a reputation across the globe for generating and
supporting high quality user-generated content published in user's personal journals
or in interest-based communities.

In India, LiveJournal has identified three key ingredients required to develop its
user base in the country, over the long term:

1. Socialisation - LiveJournal is different, in that it is a platform for words and
pictures that can be shared and discussed with ease.
2. Integration -LiveJournal should be accessible through any number of platforms.
3. Localisation - Anyone who is online in India should be able to use LiveJournal.
This means proper translation and multilingual interfaces

This contest forms the first part of the strategy. In the months to come the
LiveJournal team in Delhi, San Francisco and Moscow will be developing plans for
localisation and integrations. LiveJournal have also launched a community
(http://community.livejournal.com/lj_india/) for users in India to express their
views about how they would like their platform to develop.

Andrew Paulson, Chairman of the Board of SUP, the owners of LiveJournal globally,
said "India was our first port of call after we acquired LiveJournal last December.
We already have a great reach in many online markets and have a small but loyal
following in India. This project sees us, for the first time, actually trying to
support the growth of new local communities in India. LiveJournal already has over
16 million accounts today and I am hoping that it won't be long before there are
many more of these coming from India."

LiveJournal in India currently has 900,000 page impressions a month; 5000 unique
monthly users and 13,000 registered accounts, all of which promise to see
exponential growth post the roll-out.

Globally, LiveJournal is a service that offers tools and enablement for sharing of
content and building communities around this content.

Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Director of Corporate Development, SUP, added "India offers
strong opportunities for growth as LiveJournal seeks to expand upon its global
reach."

"LiveJournal is a natural platform for creating and sharing meaningful content
around literature, activism, education, news and politics. Quick Tales - Flash
Fiction Contest is the natural first step for us to seed many such initiatives and
communities in India," he concluded.

The Contest

Quick Tales -the LiveJournal Flash-Fiction Contest (for stories up to 500 words
long) is open for participation to anyone with a mailing address in India, from 11
August to 7 September, 2008 and is themed around the word "Journal."

The top 5 winning entries take home cash prizes of Rs. 20000, Rs. 16000 and Rs
12000, Rs. 8000 and Rs. 4000, respectively. Each of the 100 shortlisted entries
will also be highlighted on the India Writing Community (
http://community.livejournal.com/india_writing/ )on LiveJournal, where the contest
is hosted, ensuring global visibility. Short-listed stories may also be featured in
a book that LiveJournal plans to publish at a later date.

Peter Griffin, Co-Founder & Joint-Editor, Caferati said "Flash Fiction, also called
micro-fiction, short-shorts, and many other names, demands that the writer tell a
story with all the classical elements - a beginning, middle and end, a conflict and
resolution, a credible protagonist - but within a very limited number of words,
which may mean that these elements are implied rather than made explicit. It is an
ancient form, but has grown hugely in popularity in these attention-deficit times,
with the growth of the Internet. If standard short fiction is like a one-day
international, think of the Quick Tales Flash Fiction Contest as the 20-Twenty of
contemporary story-telling!"

The contest, timed to be part of India's Independence Day celebrations, will take
India across continents with the LiveJournal Home Page marking events in India,
cross-promotion across LiveJournal and outreach through Caferati's communities and
social media.


-Ends-


About LiveJournal Inc.

LiveJournal is one of the world\'s most respected community publishing platforms.
Since its launch in the United States in 1999, LiveJournal has become the online
home to a wide array of creative individuals looking to share common interests, meet
new friends and express themselves. LiveJournal encourages community and personal
expression by offering users both a user-friendly interface and the ability to
deeply customize their journal. The site allows users to set up their own virtual
diary and communicate with their friends by posting and receiving comments on each
other\'s entries. In many countries the site\'s most popular functionality is the
community aspect which allows users to engage each other on issues of common
interest.

LiveJournal has registered more than 16 million accounts since its founding, and
currently has a worldwide monthly audience of 20 million of whom 5.7 million are
Russian based (Omniture, TNS Gallup). LiveJournal Inc. is headquartered in San
Francisco, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.livejournalinc.com.

About SUP

SUP is an international online media company with established partnerships with
businesses across the globe. SUP was founded in the summer of 2006 by an
international management team with Russian seed capital. SUP set itself the goal of
building a portfolio of high-traffic-generating projects based in Moscow from which
to expand worldwide. SUP has offices in Moscow and San Francisco. SUP\'s five key
businesses are:
SUP Media
· Championat.ru, the most popular online-only sports news site in Russia;
· Gazeta.ru, a Russian online newspaper covering politics and business. Gazeta.ru
was acquired by SUP in June 2008 from Kommersant Publishing House;
· LiveJournal.com, the most popular blogging platform and social network in Russia,
and one of the most respected community publishing platforms worldwide. It was
originally run under license in Russia before it was acquired outright in December
2007. LiveJournal has over 16 million accounts worldwide and continues to add more
than 200,000 every month;
SUP Advertising
· +SOL, a media sales house which acts as SUP's internal commercial department and
sells online advertising for a number of high profile Russian and international Web
sites (Yahoo!, Last.fm, BBC, and The Times among others). +SOL\'s partners include
Mindshare Interaction, Zenith Optimedia and Optimum Media OMD;
· Victory S.A., a full-service online advertising agency which devises and delivers
online marketing campaigns for leading Russian and international brands.



For Corporate information and Contest details: Mr. Rajesh Lalwani, Scenario
Consulting
+9198106 40163.

Editorial queries: Ms. Vidhya / Sandhya | brand-comm
044-28252450 / 51





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