Is this the deathknell of Livejournal?

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Is this the deathknell of Livejournal?

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1gilroy
syyskuu 1, 2011, 7:56 am

I was puttering around and I realized that the fad that was livejournal seems to have faded into Facebook/Myspace and the like.

Are personal journals such as Livejournal dying a slow and painful death now?
What do people think?

2bluesalamanders
syyskuu 1, 2011, 8:08 am

God, I hope not. I loathe Facebook. I would never post there what I post on LJ.

Anyway, no, I don't think they are. At least, my friends list is as active as ever.

3k00kaburra
syyskuu 1, 2011, 9:29 am

I think it's been dying for years. When most people want to start a blog nowadays, they go for blogger or blogspot formats instead of LJ.

4BTRIPP
syyskuu 1, 2011, 11:00 am

I've been on LiveJournal since 2000, and back then it served functions that are presently taken up by Twitter (I well remember much 1-2 line back-and-forth going on for hundreds of comments), and by the current blog platforms (I still appreciate the flexibility of LJ, where I can post one word, or several thousand). I still use it as an alternative to being on Blogger or Wordpress (although I have other projects there), but the "live communications" feature has certainly been lost to Twitter, and the "telling your friends stuff" function to Facebook (although I loathe Facebook).

However, having in excess of 4,000 posts to my main LiveJournal I am not likely to be making a switch. I am in a "consideration phase", though, of moving my book review blog to a platform (like Wordpress) which would be easier to "monetize".

I still have a dozen or so long-time LiveJournal friends who still use that primarily, but for the past few years I've been "living on Twitter", while still blogging on LJ.

 

5bluesalamanders
syyskuu 1, 2011, 11:02 am

I hate twitter, too. I do use tumblr, though.

6gilroy
syyskuu 1, 2011, 11:38 am

I admit that I have a writing blog on Blogger, only because I felt it would reach a greater audience than LJ. I'm not sure if that's true, but the link to Google couldn't be ignored. (And I've not monetized it... yet.)

Most of my friends have gone away from LJ for "more professions blogs" on blogspot/wordpress for similar blogs. Some of them found me on facebook, though I don't play the games there so my list has shrank in recent years. Now, I'm just wondering about the viability of keeping my personal thoughts on LJ. I don't think Blogger has the privacy options that LJ does offer.

7BTRIPP
syyskuu 1, 2011, 12:01 pm

Re. #6: "I don't play the games there"

The thing I hated most about Facebook was all that game/quiz/etc. crap. I eventually discovered the plug-in which used to be called "Facebook Purity" before Facebook made them change the name (it's now something like "Fluff Busting Purity") which blocks all that garbage and I never have to see it! Here's their FB page: http://www.facebook.com/fluffbustingpurity

 

8bookmountain
syyskuu 4, 2011, 4:47 pm

I enjoy writing each day in LJ. I have been writing in LJ since March 2001-it has its lows and highs-you got to enjoy writing for your personal pleasure first and second contact with other LJ folks-peace Jonny

9melannen
syyskuu 4, 2011, 11:57 pm

Well, Dreamwidth.org still appears to be powering ahead as well as ever (and it's starting to get some of the Russian bloggers jumping ship from LJ, which is going to be interesting.)

I think what's happening is that journal sites have gone from being the option for social networking, to being, well, where you go if you want to keep an online journal, which they still do better than any of the others. People who aren't particularly interested in writing journal entries to share with limited groups of friends have better places to go now, but there are still plenty of us who like the format, and I don't forsee most of them abandoning it, as long as there's still a site up to use.

10Heather19
syyskuu 5, 2011, 6:53 am

9: "I think what's happening is that journal sites have gone from being the option for social networking, to being, well, where you go if you want to keep an online journal, which they still do better than any of the others."

Completely agree there. There are simply so *many* social networking options nowadays, and many people seem to prefer the more friends-oriented things like Facebook.

But for blog-posts, diaries, journals, whatever you want to call them, I don't think LJ will fade away anytime soon. For example, I post little snips of the stories that I write on my LJ. It's friends-locked, it's not something I can post on Facebook with the way that site is set up, or Twitter, and I don't feel comfortable posting it for the world to see on a story-site.... So LJ is still the best place for me.

11Ciarda
syyskuu 9, 2011, 12:11 pm

What I like about LJ over the other "social networking" sites is the community feel.

I mostly post about books on LJ and I would never post all of that on my Facebook as I know most of my friends on there just aren't interested. However, on LJ I've met many other bloggers with similar interests that I would not have found to communicate with so easily elsewhere.

12susanstinson
lokakuu 2, 2011, 11:44 am

I write less on lj than I used to, but I have such a soft spot in my heart for it. It's the community and the privacy options. And my own history there.

13quillmenow
lokakuu 26, 2011, 6:45 pm

If it weren't for the communities, my friends list would barely move. I go in maybe once a week and put some mundane little thing down just to let my LJ friends know I'm still alive and insane. It's sad, really. The buy-out was not a good thing.

14Isiscat7
joulukuu 2, 2011, 8:57 am

I have blogs other places that center on my work and art - they are part of my professional life. But I value LJ mainly for the privacy. I like the idea that I can have a private journal space where I can put all my thoughts about whatever I choose. Writing helps me order my thoughts and feelings and find the broader scope and view of what I'm doing in a way that wouldn't be appropriate for my other blogs. And, frankly, the social exhibitionism of Facebook and Twitter just makes me tired. Who are all those people that want to be my friend? And why do I need to know about the embarrassing over-sharing of some acquaintance? Blogs and social networks are for the public self - LJ is like a home with friends for the other side of me.

15melannen
joulukuu 22, 2011, 10:06 am

All right, all, what do you think: Is this latest redesign the actual deathknell of LJ (at least in the English world)? Most of the holdouts I know are finally jumping ship...

(for the record: Dreamwidth, which is like LJ only better, and run by people who actually want to run a journaling service, has free open account creation until the end of the year.)

16BTRIPP
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 22, 2011, 11:10 am

Oddly, I've been finding myself writing more LJ posts of late ... I still have a core of "old friends" there (I've been on LJ since 05/2000) who have never migrated to other platforms, so there are folks who'll read them ... largely due, I think, to my total dislike of FaceBook. Now, I "live" on Twitter (the details of which probably speak more to rampant OCD than communication modes), but a lot of the time 140 characters is just not enough, and I know that the "Burma Shave" approach of tweet after tweet is very irritating over there ... in these cases I find myself falling back on LJ, and then do "share on Twitter" to post a link to what I just wrote. Oddly, I'd tried using Posterous for this, and I just never felt comfortable with it (although their post-by-email feature is slick). I also suspect that being on Empire Avenue has some effect, as I get "activity points" (or whatever they call it) for blog posts, and my LJ is linked to that.

By the way ... what has been redesigned on LJ?

I still have the "Model T black" look to my journal (the initial default from the early days ... I'm user #2,663 and there weren't many options available back then!), and really haven't noticed much changes, except when they did the changing header.

There was a post recently (see my commentary HERE from the LJ management that made me feel that "they got it", and I'm thinking that as long as they keep LJ to what "LJ is", it will be continuing.

One thing I do wish they'd fix is the default to Russian on some automatic features' (like the thing which feeds one's Tweets into a daily post) titles, etc. ... but if the stuff that's irritating me about LJ is that far down the list, I think they're doing a fine job.

 

17melannen
joulukuu 22, 2011, 1:18 pm

As of ... yesterday? They made a bunch of changes to the way commenting works - the most immediate and obvious of which is that in site-scheme and S1 pages, you no longer have the option to put subject lines on comments. Also, they got rid of a lot of the other navigation stuff on comment pages, which makes it almost impossible to navigate pages where there are a lot of comment threads. They also changed some stuff with icons, etc. (It also seems to have broken commenting entirely on some browsers.)

I guess if your usage of the site doesn't involve much commenting, you wouldn't have noticed.

(There's also a rumor floating around that they're going to do a complete redesign that makes the friends page function more like a facebook wall, but I'll believe ithat one when I see it.)

18bluesalamanders
joulukuu 22, 2011, 2:52 pm

I dislike a lot of stuff about the new commenting scheme. I would shrug and leave LJ for DW (which has some things I like better and some I like worse), but 95% of my friends and comms are not interested in moving. So...nope.

19mabith
tammikuu 2, 2012, 10:22 pm

My livejournal experience has kind of revived. I have a bunch of new friends who are all quite active. I never thought it would recover from the great MySpace migration (yuck).