A Good, Old-Fashioned, LiveJournal Update
In this age of Facebook and Twitter (of course, I have accounts on each of those platforms), I've let my LiveJournal account go to seed. I maintain my paid status. Why? Do I anticipate or even hold out hope for a LiveJournal revival?
There are services that will turn your LJ into a printed book, or at least there used to be. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2003, I tried to export my LJ to one of those services. The resulting PDF came to more than 10,000 pages, many of them dominated by the white space surrounding a broken image icon.
I remember, fondly now, flame wars and fractious interactions on the libertarianism and singularity_now communities. I remember creating LJ polls. LiveJournal had everything I wanted in an online "social media" platform up and running pretty much from the first moment of the 21st Century. What it didn't have was the user base that MySpace and later Facebook achieved.
I used to write and draw comics, and I had an LJ account for those. I started a podcast in 2006, which worked out a lot better than the comics. There's a Facebook community where Friends of the C-Realm compare opinions and post links to interesting stuff. They struggle with the user interface there, as it seems designed to promote incivility and superficial discussion. Just yesterday, katuah posted, "Gods, I miss the good old days of LiveJournal."
I responded, "The crazy thing is, LiveJournal is still there. It still works. We could be using it if people would."
Well, who is "people?" Am I a member of that group? Will I use LiveJournal? Posting once, like this, is like doing yoga or going to the gym once.
And just like my LJ posts from the good ole days, I've typed until I've run out of steam, and now I'm wrapping it up with a meta comment about my lack of conclusion.
There are services that will turn your LJ into a printed book, or at least there used to be. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2003, I tried to export my LJ to one of those services. The resulting PDF came to more than 10,000 pages, many of them dominated by the white space surrounding a broken image icon.
I remember, fondly now, flame wars and fractious interactions on the libertarianism and singularity_now communities. I remember creating LJ polls. LiveJournal had everything I wanted in an online "social media" platform up and running pretty much from the first moment of the 21st Century. What it didn't have was the user base that MySpace and later Facebook achieved.
I used to write and draw comics, and I had an LJ account for those. I started a podcast in 2006, which worked out a lot better than the comics. There's a Facebook community where Friends of the C-Realm compare opinions and post links to interesting stuff. They struggle with the user interface there, as it seems designed to promote incivility and superficial discussion. Just yesterday, katuah posted, "Gods, I miss the good old days of LiveJournal."
I responded, "The crazy thing is, LiveJournal is still there. It still works. We could be using it if people would."
Well, who is "people?" Am I a member of that group? Will I use LiveJournal? Posting once, like this, is like doing yoga or going to the gym once.
And just like my LJ posts from the good ole days, I've typed until I've run out of steam, and now I'm wrapping it up with a meta comment about my lack of conclusion.