The tragedy of Facebook is the tragedy of Livejournal

[andrewducker]

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.

Comments

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

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.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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.

Well said...

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

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.