Where have all the postings gone... long time passing...

[laurion]

So, forgive me if this is a dumb question, but where did everyone go?

A forced change to livejournal (friend's page no longer accepts custom styles) has pushed me to go to each of the friends that I follow and resubscribe to their individual pages.
And I keep seeing a wasteland.  So many last updates that say things like '2010', '2009', '2007'.

Comments

[keshwyn]

I am mostly on my phone these days because of Wolfpup. The Eljay app for Android is ok for reading with, but hugely useless for posting to Dreamwidth. (Or reading there, for that matter.) And I post there, and let the cross-post handle LJ, because given Putin's demand that all blogging sites register their users I have no idea how stable LJ will be long term.

So mostly I post SCA stuff on Google+ and wish for a better Android app. FB is not in my picture.

[laurion]

True enough. There aren't good mobile apps for LJ. It predates the rise of Mobile. And I do know a lot of people who are -also- on Dreamwidth, but I don't think I know anyone who is only on Dreamwidth. I don't post much, but I do sometimes post from mobile, but Wordpress has options there.

[keshwyn]

There was a GSOC option posited for android three or four years ago for Dreamwidth. It went nowhere, and since then, there's been nothing. It's quite aggravating. It's *almost* enough to make me want to figure out android-app-development. :/

Almost.

[laurion]

There is definitely some of that 'high demands' thing going on. And the stimulus-response of the quick and easy posting to FB and Twitter, where you can get the 'same' inputs and outputs to the psyche in 140 characters or less.

People used to post to LJ that way. But there weren't other options except AIM status messages then. And people weren't using their mobile devices as their primary electronic communicator at the time. Social networking was the province of desktop computers and LJ's voice-to-post (!). But combined with the higher demands on time, we spend less of it on a desktop/laptop, and more of it on the new easy access mobiles...

The answer for me is to build ways of doing the old stuff on new devices, but that's not for everyone.

So yes, I'l keep reading, and commenting, and posting, and commenting. It is better with an audience.

[lisefrac]

I think your theories are right on. Lots of people still read, but very few comment. And that's precisely because most internet usage these days is mobile, and clicking "like" buttons is easier than composing a thoughtful reply. Even for me, a heavy LJ user, I don't even try to reply to to things on my phone. (The iOS app is just as terrible as the Android app is said to be, I can confirm).

But as you say, I am still here, and seemingly incapable of not posting. Most of my thoughts are longer than a few hundred characters. I always was an overachiever.

[offside7]

I noticed a migration to dreamwidth a while back and made an account but never did anything with it. I vaguely wonder if dreamwidth is more active than I realize. For me personally, I've stopped writing posts about the bummers in my life because I get depressed writing them and I don't think people really want to read them. The bulk of non-bummer, happy stuff in my life is currently larp related, which sounds kind of obsessive, but for one thing... I am kind of obsessive (let's call it enthusiastic) and for another, larp is an outlet for my other hobbies, too. Larp inspired me to take dance classes, costuming for Larp inspires me to work on sewing and other art hobbies (like calligraphy, sketching, and other prop building crafts) and my current main sport is boffer fighting. And all of that stuff ends up on my larp-focused blog, leaving... mostly tv and movie reviews for my lj. Some of which get so long and rambly that I just leave them as private

[laurion]

You're so passionate that it spills outside the bounds of social networks and into its own separate entity. and that's a good thing. And I fully recognize the need for things like that to have their own space. that isn't a problem. And you still -comment- a lot on LJ. Which is important too.

And yes, the conversational orientation of LJ does beat most other systems. That's somewhat an artifact of when it was birthed.

I'm not sure that you should be crossposting everything from the larp focused blog. Some of it, maybe. But maybe you'd be served by setting up an LJ syndication to it so people who still primarily use LJ as their update channel would be able to easily get those updates.

[ladysprite]

Still here for posting anything longer than a sentence or two. I'm on Facebook as well, mostly because.... well, that's where everyone is active, now. And as much as I don't like it, I'll get 40 or 50 replies there when I get 3-4 here. Completely aside from the positive feedback, it just seems like more people actually see what I say there.

But LJ will always be my home for thinking and writing, instead of just one-sentence data dissemination. It just feels like yodeling into the void sometimes......

[laurion]

Not entirely a void. But I'm sure that you, like me, see posts from the same few people, and comments from the same few people, over and over.

Is LJ now the social network equivalent of a retirement home? We see the same faces day in and day out saying the same things every time until they or we too pass over?

[mindways]

Most people's comments here make sense to me, though I might rephrase wispfox's to "nowhere and everywhere" - dispersal to Facebook, G+, tumblr, Twitter, and other sites has diluted all of them.

(Saving perhaps Facebook, though that may just be because the torrent of content seems so huge. But it's very different stuff than got put here.)

If I had more time, I'd be investigating social media aggregators, and rolling my own if none of the ones out there suited me well enough.

(Personally, I'm on DW/LJ most, with G+ slightly less often but rising. I use Facebook when I must, and Twitter when I think of it, which isn't often these days.)