Help us make it easier to find communities & make new friends!

[theljstaff]

First, we wanted to thank you for all the wonderful feedback you provided in our previous post! A few of the common themes we saw that we wanted to talk more about today are the ideas of using LiveJournal to read and participate in its communities, to meet new people and build meaningful friendships with them, and for having a private or semi-

Comments

[asher63]

Thank you for this. As a ten-year veteran of LJ, I'd like it to be easier to connect with new members.

One thing I think would help: A way to filter out abandoned or inactive accounts from searches. If I do a search on an interest (say "ham radio") I get a page that's mostly people who haven't posted since 2011 or 2008.

I'd like a search feature that lets you sort or filter for new and/or recently active users.

[mr_spock]

I just became a 10-year veteran this month, and I think your suggestion is a good one.

[gonzo21]

Terrific idea. Plus it's that sense of abandoned communities that maybe makes new people think LJ is completely dead.

So yes, excluding inactive accounts from searches, definitely a good idea.

[asher63]

Yes, exactly! Seeing page after page of abandoned journals is not going to encourage people to join.

[mr_spock]

The interest search feature could be made much more relevant by making one (hopefully small) change - instead of displaying the first 500 journals or communities to add an interest, make it display the 500 most active (in the last 30 days) journals or communities that have added that interest.

[keiliss]

This!

[daisychain1957]

And a yes from me :D

[belenen]

Yeah, i thought it already did this and so there were only the tiniest handful of active results. Searching by last updated first and interest second would be much better.

[love_82]

I use to like it when you highlighted different communities at the top of the homepage. Maybe you could do something like that again? Like once a week highlight however many communities. But then I don't know how many people go to the homepage when they log on. Lately I have been going straight to my friend's page.

A newsletter might be a good idea. Once a month send out a letter that shows any communities created that month and highlights a certain number of communities or so many communities in different categories. Let people nominate communities.

To help people looking to add friends maybe you could host a friending meme every so often for people looking to add friends or have a community you can post to where you find people to add and say you would like to be added. Divide it into different categories/by interests.

[gonzo21]

Newsletter is a better idea than highlighting them on the home page. Who uses the home page? Nobody I know.

Perhaps set up a Best Of LJ community, run by the LJ staff, and put some energy into it, doing a daily highlight or something awesome/interesting that somebody somewhere has posted.

I'm sure we'd all like to see more interesting content on our f-lists.

It's no co-incidence that Andrewducker has launched into the top 5 with his daily round-up of interesting links.

[love_82]

Yeah, the only time I went on the homepage was to log in. And then I never looked around. The only reason I saw the featured comms was because they were right up there at the top.

And yes, exactly, a best of LJ community would be great. I love the idea of doing a daily highlight. Personally I love it when people on my flist post interesting links and random things.

[gonzo21]

You could even then automatically subscribe new users to the Best Of LJ community, to give them an instant starting point on how to get into using the site.

[a_phoenixdragon]

I wish I had relevant/intelligent suggestions, but I know my limits. Here's to hoping you get the answers you need though - and a thousand thanks for listening to your base. In other words:

[euphrosyna]

Better, filtered searches. A way to filter out the Russian language sites (or whatever languages you want), filter out communities that haven't had posts in x amount of time, maybe even an indicator of how often on average posts are made in the community in the results. Maybe a way to search by multiple interests.

[gonzo21]

A translation tool so that we can understand the Russian posters, and vice versa?

[slinkslowdown]

I don't know how much people would appreciate that... FB has a translation tool and 99% of the time, the translated text is so bad it's as good as useless.

[mr_spock]

I have yet to find a computerized language translator that is worth using. They have no grasp of multiple definitions or idioms.