andrewducker | The tragedy of Facebook is the tragedy of Livejournal

The tragedy of Facebook is the tragedy of Livejournal

The tragedy of Faceook is that it's too easy. Too simple. Too trivially effortless to both read and write entries. You can dash off 10 seconds of update and then forget about it. You can skim your way down a list of updates, safe in the knowledge that there'll be very little there that actually engages you, and tht if you miss something it isn't important.

It doesn't take energy, it doesn't take thought, it doesn't take very much at all. And it interrupts the build-up of emotion which might have led to a longer post on somewhere like Livejournal. If you've burnt off your frustration at your fellow passengers on the bus this morning by posting a one sentence burst of anger then why would you bother writing it up in any more detail? And it's always going to be easier to drop off on sentence about how much you love your current TV favourite than it is to write a whole review.

Better (and worse) yet - nobody is going to pick apart your argument, because you aren't making one. Nobody is going to try and dissect your take on your favourite novel, offering you new insights, because Facebook comments don't support that level of interaction. Livejournal offers you a massive area for text input, Facebook gives you a couple of lines. Sure, you _can_ type in as much as you like, but the psychological difference is immense.

And this means that many, many people have moved away from Livejournal. Possibly still reading (I still get a fair few hits per day), but not updating their own journals, not joining in the conversations, not interacting, not being part of a community. And, in its own dysfunctional manner, LJ is a community. But it feels, nowadays, like a dwindling one. One that feels, to me, like it's dropping towards a critical point where the feedack isn't enough to keep people updating at all.

Of course, I've been reading "Livejournal is dead! Any minute now!" posts since 2001, and it's still here (140th most popular site on the internet, according to something Google posted recently). Maybe it's not livejournal, maybe it's the natural turnover as people change, the churn of busy lives pushing people away to do real things in real places, while new people arrive that I have less of a connection to.

But it's something I find myself intermittently missing, that's for sure.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Long-form content, unfortunately, was only ever going to be a passing fad on the Internet. Most people aren't writers, of diaries or otherwise, and if they can get their thoughts across in 140 characters or less in under ten seconds, so much the better.

Generally, I think that's great news for those of us who still do like to write. But in the case of LiveJournal, I agree; I find Facebook cold and unsettling, whereas this site allowed people to get their thoughts and feelings down in a much more personal way.

To be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if a simple mailing list among friends might be a better option these days. It's more immediate, but also allows for those sorts of long entries. More personal, even, than Livejournal.

But then how do you meet new people to add to the mailing list? The strength of LJ, I think, is that it provides community. It takes effort to make new friends but there are so many people on LJ that I'd never have met through mutual acquaintances simply because those acquaintances don't exist.

I ran a mailing list before I turned to Livejournal.

And part of me has been thinking that I'd be happy to have that sense of talking to people I knew and trusted again.

But then I also liked branching out to new people.

And getting the right people onto the mailing list was always a pain - very easy to either corrupt the pool and end up in a socially awkward situation of having to chuck someone off or end up missing out on all sorts of things.

I'm not so sure it was only a passing fad. I think what accelerated the switch from journals to Facebook & Twitter was mobile phones.

Facebook, Twitter and the like are essentially places where people post single line entries. It is very easy to update these from the mobile device of your choice. LJ is not easy to update from a phone as typing is so much slower than with a usual keyboard. Also, they have custom apps designed to keep you constantly informed the moment an update happens via your mobile phone, whereas to read LJ you need some form of browser, which is possible on a phone, but not nearly as accessible.

Yeah, I read Twitter/FB all the time from my phone, I don't read LJ in the same way. If LJ allowed downloading of content in the same way then it'd be perfectly possible, and probably pretty readable. But access via web browser just isn't as nice.

I think the real writers have got so much better at blogging, that the mental barrier to entry has been raised.

Also, I think Facebook is better than LJ because it grabs pictures from links, making it a lot less hassle to make a passing comment on something.

I don't link from FB to LJ because the former is very much my public face.

The way I look at it is that in a way it's making LJ better, because it's weeding out the casuals and leaving behind people like you and I who make involved posts and comment a good deal.

I'd rather have fewer readers who actually comment so I know when I've "reached" them than a ton of "friends" who read but never comment.

There is that advantage, certainly. But I did like it when I could keep up with the lives of my real life friends through LJ.

A lot of the real writers (those who post a lot) have ended up becoming my real life friends. I meet at least three or four new ones every year - I think mostly because I live somewhere pretty and warm so by meeting the 'real" me they also get a mini vacation.

Maybe it's not livejournal, maybe it's the natural turnover as people change, the churn of busy lives pushing people away to do real things in real places, while new people arrive that I have less of a connection to.

I tend to think it's the above. I know I still find new people with whom to interact but I've had to consciously get back into the habit of talking to strangers on friends journals and communities. I think the proliferation of friends-only journals makes it a little harder, too. It was really easy, before, when you could scan a bunch of entries, decide a person looked interesting, and friend them.

It's been about 10 years now that I've been livejournaling. I think it's changed a lot but I'm not quite ready to declare it dead. I just have to make more of an effort again. And, really, that's probably okay, probably better than it being as easy as Facebook.

I think you're right about having to make an effort to find interesting people who still make an effort to post on LJ.

Last year I was very focused on my art and as a result rarely had a chance to post to my journal or read my friends list. Now that I'm back, I can see that about a third of my LJ friends have abandoned their journals and made a mass exodus to Facebook. I had to find new people to interact with on here, weeding through the friends-locked journals... sometimes adding them with hopes that they would be interesting if their profile page looked promising enough. LJ has changed, but I don't think it's necessarily dying.

Anyway, in the spirit of all that, and having enjoyed your comment, I added you as a friend :)

It is very nice to meet you.

I know what you mean about the absence followed by realization - I didn't LJ for a season due to depression and now that I am really getting back into it, so many people are gone. It's fun to reach out though. I like meeting new people - and so I added you back.

Well, I'm still posting. Admittedly, not at such length these day, but then not a lot has happened to me of note these past two or three months. Once I actually get out of the house into a regular job, I'm hoping all that will change.

Yeah, this is a problem.

Mind you, in my case I think the decrease in long posts has also had a lot to do with my career shifting back to writing and producing.

I shall look forward to you starting to post again.

In much the same way as I never alphebetised my books when I worked in a library?

Fifty-fifty, yeah. The other side is that one of the other things I was doing before was writing for a huge website which required about 2000 words a day in addition to everything else I did, so at that point I was rather in practise at writing long screeds.

I think there is a cohort effect: over time you change and so does your group; you make good friends online and your needs change.

At the same time I agree that there is a dwindling of posts - something I've really noticed in the last couple of months. I said something in a recent post about the constricting effect of a known audience, too. In some ways, I feel that I've said all that I can say to the people who read me. Actually, I'd like to say more, on other subjects, but I'm convinced that the context isn't right for it.

I alread blog professionally, on Wordpress, and have 2 more moribund blogs over there. I've been thinking about writing much more on one of them. Blogging itself is alive and well.

LJ could do a lot more. Wordpress is much easier to work with, after the initial shock of the dashboard. I really think they're falling behind, in terms of innovating.

What does Wordpress do that LJ doesn't?

Stats. Integration with other social media services. Visual editor. Themes that don't suck. Trackbacks. Plugins.

And probably a lot more, that's just off the top of my head.

http://www.livejournal.com/statistics/
It also supports ShareThis, although that's pretty simple.
The latest version of FCKEditor that LJ uses in Rich Text view works pretty well or visual editing for me.
You can do your own themes, but I agree that they're not to everyone's taste.

Trackbacks and Plugins I agree with. Not that I actually see much value in trackbacks - thy seem to get very spammy.

Edit: I forgot that you can also use Google Analytics if you're a paid user.

Edited 2010-06-04 11:40 (UTC)

Ok, I'll add one more - decent marketing to tell people what features they have :)

Seriously, that stats stuff is pretty cool. The major problem with the themes is that there are tens of thousands of the things for Wordpress, and as far as I can tell about six pre-made ones for LJ. Certainly I've never seen anything as fancy as some of the WP themes.

You did my work. I never actually realised LJ had a stats function.

I may be doing it wrong, but photo uploading and positioning is far easier on Wordpress. The dashboard is lovely and there are lots of widgets to use. I stay on LJ for the friendslist, but I might get tempted to try Posterous or Tumblr for that quality.

How do you post to LJ?

The clients I use on Windows and Android will both automatically upload a photo (or many) as part of the posting process.

Clients are frequently much further developed than the actual LJ interface. Which for those of us that dislike clients, is annoying.

LJ has a lot of reasonable features, but they're mostly hidden. On balance, I think LJ is as good as WP, but in different ways.

However, WP is a lot easier to use, the UI is substantially better, and thus wins on points. If I'm setting someone up, I give them WP, until DW gets the UI up to scratch, and forces LJ to follow (Which it probably will), I wouldn't consider promoting an LJ/DW to someone vaguely new.

People drift away, always have. But LJ is no longer replacing them with new users.

It used to be most of my friends were on here, now it's a tiny number.

I've not played with WP for ages, but I used to find it clunky and error-prone. I assume they've ironed the bugs out. Have they got a decent comments system for it yet (i.e. threaded, with OpenID support, and the ability to get comment notifications)?

What's better about the UI?

Threading yes, I don't think you can login using OpenID on the wp.com site, but you can on self installs with a plugin.

Comment notification is for all comments on a post, not just your comments, but that's fine by me as I tend to prefer it.

Hard to explain why the UI is better, it's simply a lot easier to teach people, and most people tend to be able to get on with it fairly quickly, including non-techies.

For example, the Govt depts that've started using it are finding it much better than any commercial software they'[ve previously used, and it's going to be rolled out further for other sites.

This is good.

If you're used to the LJ UI, you know how to use it. Except, how many people have said, on this post, they didn't know about certain LJ features?

Most users not knowing about most features (including the several hundred LJ themes) is a sign the UI stinks. Wordpress.com actually has far fewer themes available than LJ has. But ask a typical user of both, they'll say the opposite.

I use tracking of whole posts occasionaly, but mostly I just want to know who has replied specifically to me - I want to have a conversation about one thing, not get caught up in someone else's massive flamewar elsewhere on the thread (this appears to be a hangover from usenet).

I definitely agree that LJ is terrible at letting people know about features. The statistics thing, for instance, was hidden in a news post that also contained utter rubbish that nobody I know would care about. And the current ones contain fic about the site mascot, which puts pretty much everyone off I know them.

Oh, and you can't have LJ being served direct from your domain in any useful manner. A massive limitation for people who would otherwise probably use it as their own blog.

There is, I think, a plugin for a self hosted that allows per-thread subscription, it was called "LJ comments only better" or similar. Not currently having hosting I haven't tried it.

And yes, the current News posts led me, finally, to remove it from my friends page completely, I still get the email notifications, but read each weekly post in utter bemusement; the previous team had a strict policy of ensuring that only important site-wide stuff (like new features) got onto news, now the exact opposite is true and I have no interest in most of it.

The domain mapping thing is actually one of my bigger bugbears; they've got the code to fix it so it works properly, it's integrated for all the Indepependent Minds accounts, but the guy who was sorting it out to work everywhere (at my request although he knew it was a good idea) was one of those that got fired in the mess that caused them to relaunch DW.

DW is going to make sure domain mapping works properly, it's one of the "blocking launch" bugs. At which point I'll get together enough cash to buy a domain and map it properly, and see how well I can do at using an LJ fork as a proper blog.

I suspect "very well indeed" if they can sort the OpenID login process out. Less well if comment logging in remains clunky.

Yeah, I really hope they can make DW work. I do find it a bit weird that they're still in Beta after so long.

Aye, but there's a clear reason for it:
http://denise.dreamwidth.org/tag/bug+counts

When that "blocking launch" goes from 31 to 0, then launch happens.

I tried to find where the actual numbers come from in buzilla, but my brain fried.

http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/

Well, there's 36 bugs with a target of "Launch":
http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&target_milestone=L%20-%20Launch

So it seems likely that it's a subset of that.

That's weird; after more digging, I got a report of 23, which seems to be a subset, but the ones on your list appear also important.

Maybe they've made/found some more actual real major bugs and it's gone up?

Sometimes they do create new bugs when fixing other things, which I'm fine with as long as they don't try to hide/ignore it, unlike, say, LJ.

MEh, at least there's a target objective, and it's an ongoing project, I don't think they've decided yet what not being in Beta will actually mean.

this

It is a subset. It's down. It was 31. It's now three.

So what I said above as being one of the "blocking launch" bugs isn't, but when Mark's got the interoperability stuff down, we're good to go.

From here.

(you need to be logged in, and there's a list of the saved reports in the preferences area)

In the LJ context I often think about a remark made decades ago by the late Rick Sneary: "I've never had as many friends as I've wanted -- but sometimes more than I could handle". Having friends, and being a friend, involve a lot of paying-attention and fence-mending -- time-consuming responsibilities I'm no longer blythe about assuming.

I've never made much effort to "make friends", but do treasure coming across an occasional Kindred Spirit, and LJ is ... at least as good for that as old-time Fanzine LetterColumns were. Undoubtedly I'm different from the usual LJ-user. The discovery of it including getting back into some sort of contact with (literally) almost 200 comfortable-with-the-written-word people I'd been acquainted with (and liked, admired, or found interesting) for up to fifty years. Then, checking the "Friends" sites of many of them revealed quite a few new Potential friends -- to the point of Overload, actually.

Back in the late '50s, when I got into Fanzines, I was /y/o/u/n/g/ thoroughly convinced that most of what I had to say was Important, so I published a lot, and wrote many multiple-page Letters of Comment. The past couple of decades ... not so much, & decreasing -- I don't write _long_ comments to others' LJs, and haven't updated my HomePage since establishing it. Yeah, I'm still sometimes driven to write long Rants, but seem to have developed the wisdom to just file them somewhere in the computer's memory.

Facebook/Twitter, it seems to me, are just part of a communication system based on casual & brief superficial social chitter-chatter -- which certainly has its place in social interaction, but isn't my cup of tea.

I have a Facebook account because so many members of my family and friends are on the social networking site, and I like Facebook.

But Live Journal is my online community. I've had an account since the site started, and many of my online friends are also friends in "the meat-space," (as my friend refers to real, physical life.)

Over the years people have been very supportive, caring, and fun. I love Live Journal and I love my LJ friends, (even if we've yet to meet in person.) I'd like to see a Live Journal conference, (preferably held in SF or Las Vegas,) where we could all get together and meet each other in person, and just have a good time.

mMy engagment with LJ dropped off due to me deciding that there would be no non-work internet comms at work- at least not on my PC. LJ commenting was dodgy on my phone - also heavy phone use is a touch obvious and non-professional.

TLDR.

I like this comment. :)

One of the things that's really starting to grate on my nerves about Facebook is that even reasonably serious posts tend to attract Wacky Funtime replies. The assumption that short = superficial is so ingrained that almost any post can be fodder for someone's stupid fucking unfunny joke. Unless it's a post about, say, your parents dying or something, it's pretty much open season.

This, to me, is the worst side effect of the casual atmosphere there. Because it goes beyond the site design lending itself to superficiality into feeling like there's a whole culture there that actually enforces superficiality. It's as though any attempt to be serious is ignored or deflated with "humor" so that everyone can get back to comfortably blathering about nothing and not having to think about anything.

And maybe that's exactly what's going on. Maybe I'm in the wrong for occasionally wanting something more than that. But honestly, if that's the case, I'd rather people just ignore it than feel the need to make not-especially-clever comments.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant.

Anyway, one other thing I've found is that I'm actually posting more on LJ since I started using FB. I'm still not back to the level I was a few years ago, but I'm not posting every one to three months anymore either. I'm not really sure if Facebook has anything to do with it, mind you, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

It's the nature of life IMO: people find things in common, aggregate, but over time change and move on. What you see on Facebook & LJ is no different to what happens in real life.

I have friends I used to be very close to but for various reasons (new families, changes in ambitions, attitudes or priorities) no longer see. Interestingly, there are also relationships that remain strong despite changes. Typically, these are when parties involved put effort in to actively maintain the relationships, which I guess, goes back to your original point.

Thing about the social networking sites is because it is so easy, it's helpful for maintaining those nodding acquaintances, friends that you'd like to maintain contact with but not to the extent of having to put too much effort into it.

What I find interesting is that of my friends with blogs/frequent lengthy LJ posts, they keep them very separate from FB. I was expecting that they would put links to their Important Blog Posts on their FB, but they never do. Some of them want to keep their LJ separate from an FB account with their real name (although very few of them would be hard to find on LJ if you went looking, so really when they talk about keeping things separate, it's mostly just to sound more exciting/dramatic)

FB is often just trivialities, spam for joining pages/groups concerned with burning issues masquerading as political/moral discussion and links with little or no context. Or, if you're reading more than status updates, nigh-endless stuff about the games people are playing. It is absolutely incredible (as in, I am amazed they managed to do this and that people, myself included, bought into it) that a site that is used to describe/record/share the minutiae of daily life is so popular. Who needs to watch reality tv shows when I can find out at 9.14 that a friend wants a coffee and at 9.25 that it didn't help. Some people (apparently) use Twitter like this, but either they repost twitter to FB or they just use FB like that..

FB lets us keep up with people we often wouldn't be interested in keeping up to date with, by hearing about things we don't actually care about . Of my circle of friends, how many are there of whom I actually genuinely care how their day at work went or whether they have a headache? I have 75 friends on FB, and I can tell you that the number is less than 75. There are some that I care about to that degree, but not that many, and I wouldn't expect most of them to care that I've just watched an awesome pop video, or that my tea got cold while I was pwning n00bs.

Edited 2010-06-03 19:59 (UTC)

> I was expecting that they would put links to their Important Blog Posts on their FB, but they never do.

Some do and it's just WEIRD.

I'm still getting around 120-160 posts a day on my flist, same as I've had for the last few years (since I trimmed off all the syn accounts, when I was getting about double that).

For myself, there are two reasons I use LJ less:

The first is that I did use livejournal as a means of keeping up with people I didn't see often. In some ways, Facebook is a better tool for that.

The second & probably the main reason I don't update often myself is that when I started my LJ I was a student. I'm now a manager, travel a fair bit & have no LJ access at work. To update in the past I would go directly to my PC as soon as an idea popped into my head. Now I have to still want to blog when I get home & take the time out of my evening to do so. Thus the number of times I end up posting has reduced dramatically.

Coming in late to say, This! When I started LJ, I was mostly unemployed (did some freelance stuff from home, but still close to 'puter). Now, I'm working 40+ hours a week outside the home (and personal internet-ing is frowned upon even if you happen to find one of the computers that still has access to the external web).

Plus, there's the whole thing of my family (read: sis-in-law & the kids) posting pics on FB. :)

I used to update my personal blog almost daily, crossposting to LJ. Those updates became an important part of my daily routine when I became homeless, but after a time I started to look back on my entries and found them painfully embarrassing. I ended up erasing the whole blog on realizing that I was clearly mentally ill. Then I went to get help.

It worked.

i don't post anything long form at the moment because I'm stupidly busy and have only had iphone internet at night. I now have the phone tethered to the netbook, which is vastly better.

But now, life is completely different. My brain works, and I have more close friends than ever. I'm in a relationship that is both healthy and works on an equal and open level. I do things I love every day, and things are improving, literally, on a daily basis. As such I feel I'll have things worth posting about, but will only rarely have time to write it up.

and that's absolutely fine :)

Happily with a paid account I'm protected from the ugliness of the ads on LJ, but I know a lot of people wandered off when it started getting really bad.

I have noticed a drop off in my own writing though, I think a lot of that has to do with becoming ever more private and close-mouthed as I get older.

I think it mostly comes down to the fact that my life sucks right now, and so the thoughts that I have that are superficial whatever go on facebook and the thoughts that I have that are deep and important... are all about stuff that is mostly no one's freaking business.

Could not have said it better.

I post less now because I feel I have less to say. I am less "out there". I'm not out doing things, meeting people and getting experiences.
A lot of posts I used to make and that other people make are of the "look at me! I'm not ok! give me validation!" type. Maybe there is less posting going on because we are all feeling better in ourselves? I would hope so anyway because feeling crap for that long is seriously unhealthy.

These days I find myself doubting the value of my opinion. Either in my ability to articulate it or for not wanting to upset people. So quite often I will have an idea for a post or even a reply, start typing it and then think "Actually no, this isn't worth sharing with the world."

Looking back on things I've written, it seems to be that I am most prolific when I am most unhappy. If the price of happiness is keeping it to myself I think I'm ok with that.

It's a fair point. I do feel a lot of the argumentative culture on LJ, particularly around sensitive issues, has become a lot more aggressive - arguably even more aggressive than Usenet in the old days, where at least ad hominems were frowned upon (in the groups I frequented, anyway). I could be wrong on that, though - might just be rose-tinting.

I suspect the relevant difference between LJ now and Usenet then is that mail readers have killfiles.

And by "mail" of course I mean "news". Gah.

True :)

Also, I think a lot of Usenet users were still coming from an academic background, and so quite a few of them had a foundation in the conventional rules of debate. Hence, if you went off on an ad hominem attack you were likely to get slapped down. Not so much the case on the wider Internet these days.

I have a response to this, I think, but it hasn't gelled yet.

I completrely agree: I have been posting much less since I have ben active on Twitter...

The tragedy of Facebook is the tragedy of Livejournal

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Well said...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(Watch this space)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject