As of December 2003, 444,066 people owned a DeadJournal, 40,569 of whom had updated in the last week (a rise of approximately 80,000 users over the past year, but with the same number of active users). [1]
While DeadJournal was created before the introduction of invite codes on LiveJournal, there was a time when these codes were required to create an account on LiveJournal, but not DeadJournal, which lead to DeadJournal being seen as a "more free" alternative. This is no longer the case, however, with the situation having reversed. Now, DeadJournal requires a new user desiring journal space to have an invite code from an existing user or to pay for an account, whereas this requirement has been removed from LiveJournal.