I received an e-mail from a certain company this morning (*cough* LiveJournal *cough*) that had some important updates that they thought I should be aware of. This got sent directly to my home e-mail account, so I wouldn't miss this breaking news:

First, they wanted to let me know they had new offices in SoMa, "an up-and-coming district in San Francisco with a downtown/industrial vibe." Awesome! That's great! Thanks for sharing! "SoMa is home to many internet companies (including Six Apart), the SF Museum of Modern Art, AT&T Park (Go Giants!), as well as lots of locally-owned restaurants, book stores and galleries. We're moving onto the top floor of a historic three-story building with exposed brick and flexible meeting spaces with sliding walls. There's even a little patio area where Frank can hang out on sunny San Francisco days." Hmmm, so they're moving the LiveJournal offices closer to the current owners (SixApart). Well, at least it isn't in the not-quite-so-happening part of San Francisco, right?

(I'm reminded of Joel on Software's moving article on why his company moved across New York: "Basically, we're moving because of William Whyte's rule: virtually all corporate relocations involve a move to a location which is closer to the CEO's home than the old location". Read the rest of the article for why this isn't necessarily a "good thing".)

But, hey, you can't just send out an e-mail to everyone letting them know you moved offices, right? There needs to be more content than that.

And you can bet your bippy that LiveJournal has you covered:

"LiveJournal has been selected as a finalist in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards."

Oh, so you're looking for the suck-up vote to rig a meaningless poll? That's awesome too.

"LiveJournal is nominated in the 'Social' category. So if you think LJ is superior to Digg, Facebook, or MySpace, we hope you'll go vote and let the world know!"

Yeah, I'll get right on that! I mean, Digg didn't just move into a hip, happening part of San Francisco, with an industrial vibe. No, I think they're busy building Revision 3 and making content or something.

But wait, kids, they've saved the best for last:

Just In Case You Need A Little Convincing...
Here's just one reason, out of many, we think LiveJournal deserves your vote. So far in 2008, LiveJournal has had less downtime than MySpace, Friendster, Facebook and LinkedIn. In fact, with only ten minutes of downtime, LiveJournal has had a full 12 hours and 18 minutes less downtime than Bebo. See the pingdom post for the complete list of social networks and their downtime.

Wow! LiveJournal is AWESOME! They were down a whole 15 minutes less than Myspace! And they were down a whole 1h 25m less than Facebook! They're really there for me when I need to get my emo poetry out RIGHT AWAY!

Of course they fail to mention that Yahoo 360 has even less downtime than LiveJournal thus far, but nobody uses Yahoo 360, right? I wonder how many active accounts there are on Yahoo 360 compared with LiveJournal. Something tells me there's a convergence in there somewhere.

I could go on about how they've added a new icon, and reorganized their LJ2008 board, or even how they have new "V-Gifts", (Hey, I can pay real money for virtual property that takes the place of real gifts for real people? Awesome!) but it's clear to me that LiveJournal is firmly caught in the death spiral. If someone could get the last few folks I care about on LiveJournal to start up blog pages elsewhere, I'd be grateful.

Turn out the lights, throw the anti-freeze in the pipes, and move somewhere else. This LiveJournal trailer is done. And f someone can show me how to keep messages in my LJ inbox from being forwarded to my home mail, I'd be much obliged.