To expand on what I said in class Monday:
LiveJournal is one site among many social media and/or social networking and/or blogging sites. It also happens to be, from what I can tell, more or less the entirety of the Russian blogosphere, for reasons going waaaay back. (In Russian, "blog" is ЖЖ, from Живой Журнал - literally, "LJ" and "LiveJournal.")
The attacks seem to be directed at the Russian users of the site, although all users have been affected. Early rounds of this particular DDoS episode were directed fairly specifically against politically outspoken Russian bloggers, but the scope has expanded. The attacks began at the end of March and, last I heard, are ongoing.
I have noticed Russian users popping up on Dreamwidth in significant numbers - requesting that invite codes be sent to .ru email addresses, posting and commenting in Russian - which makes sense because the structure of a journaling site is familiar; on the other hand, Dreamwidth's navigation, FAQs, etc. aren't translated into Russian and the direction of development doesn't seem to align with the needs of these users. I'm not sure where else Russian users might be trying to regroup, or how successful their social networks (as expressed through friends lists on LJ) have been at routing around the damage. I am not sure how long LiveJournal would have to be under siege to trigger a massive permanent migration (or where that exodus would settle down), and I really hope we don't find out.
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