LJ is still a little relevant

[sabotabby]

I'm consciously avoiding Facebook these days. I don't even want to look at it. I gather there are probably some features on it that I need to disable.

Facebook's effect on social networking reminds me of what happened with Chapters-Indigo in Canada. All of the small publishers and bookstores went out of business, and everyone had to go to Chindigo, and then Chindigo realized that it was much more profitable to sell a small number of popular books and lots of diaries and scented candles. So everyone ditched and started buying books on Amazon. I don't know what the SNS equivalent of Amazon is.

I'm avoiding G+ because nymwars have resulted in practically no one I know using it for anything other than posting about nymwars.

I'm trying to like Tumblr but there is not a convenient way to comment. It doesn't feel very social or interactive to just click a heart. And I'm not sure that there is a big audience for pictures of pulp sci-fi covers that look like they have dicks on them, which appears to be the theme I've fallen into.

So I'm glad LJ is still here.

And also because I love you guys.

Comments

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

A further thought about why FB seemed to thrive at the expense of LJ:

It's not that FB was a better LJ; it's that a lot of people may have been using LJ more for its social networking features which were not its core strength, and not because they actually wanted a blogging platform in the first place. So when FB became known as a much better social-networking site, that being its primary purpose, a lot of the "just here because LJ's social-networking afterthought features work better than some primitive social-networking sites" LJ users migrated their online presence to the site that's better at what they had really wanted in the first place. Leaving a bunch of really-did-want-a-blogging-platform users and really-like-the-hybrid users to stay here.

Maybe?

[sabotabby]

You raise a good point. Many of my favourite LJs to read from when I first got on are still here. But I'm a hybrid user, otherwise I'd blog on WordPress or something.