Facebook: What Livejournal could've been

[matgb]

Very good article at ReadWriteWeb on the massive growth of Facebook:

As well as quantity, Facebook has on its side that it is a very sticky site - 50% of registered users come back to the site every day. Facebook is generating more than 40 billion page views per month, from 24 million "active" users - 50 pages per user every day, which is very very high. In comparative terms, Facebook is now the 6th most trafficked site in the U.S. and gets more page views than eBay.

When last I saw innerbrat she made a good point to me that I hadn't considered; a lot of LJers are here for the journalling; keep in touch with friends behind a wall, etc. Facebook has that, and has been very cunning in the way they've built up. LJ always had it, but stopped developing in any coherent way a long time before 6A bought them out, and have now lost the curve. The potential new users for LJ are going to Facebook. And then some.

The recent fuss hasn't helped (news has updates, still digesting it all and watching how things pan out). Livejournal had the best elements of a blogging platform, flexible privacy options that simply don't exist elsewhere, and the potential to be a good social network, much better than MySpace. They dropped the ball (I still think limiting the directory searches to paid users is the stupidest thing ever - new users need it, new users rarely pay until they get more involved), and now Facebook is massive. For a long time I had three tabs that I opened when I booted up Fx for the evening; Gmail, my friends page and my Wordpress dashboard. When I put the blog on hiatus, I removed the dashboard. I added Facebook about three weeks ago, and I'm now spending as much time trawling there as I am on LJ.

Now we have the new applications platform, with so much coolness. RSSbook, for example; I have a feed I like, I add it, I see which of my friends also has it, and also good feeds they like. I'm not sure I like the layout, but it's cool to see other things my friends are interested, in a much more userfriendly way than having to go look at profiles. Facebook may be The One True website. The best bit? Much of it is built on Open Source technology. In fact, some of the source code comes from Livejournal itself.

I still love the LJ community, but I've been saying for ages I planned to jump ship at least partially, and host my journal elsewhere. Given the recent mess, I don't trust the LJ higher ups at all; yes, the account suspended on my friends list is back, but a simple look at the interests should have said not needing suspension in the first place. Facebook has won the social network war, Wordpress and Blogger won the free blogging platform fight, what's left for LJ. Fandom? They're leaving.

Any site like this needs new users to keep feeding in, else it withers and slowly dies. LJ is dying, and the owners are helping kill it. Ah well.

Comments

[shakalooloo.livejournal.com]

This particular bit of fallen sky is very heavy...

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Have recently acquired Facebook account: is pretty dull, TBH. Guess I'll let it fester (the brother has a MySpace account, but then, "he's in the industry")

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

LJ is dying, and the owners are helping kill it. Ah well.

Nah. People live for the drama.

[innerbrat]

You always make me sound so clever.

[matgb]

Um, dude? I got a BA, you're close to a PhD. You is ded smart see. Besides, I hadn't put the tie into facebook being a 'journal' before either.

Although I'm suspecting the posted notes feed may also be public, which would be weird.

Also? I used to have that icon as well...

[matgb]

I had mine for a bit before I started using it; it's the feeds that make it really work, when your friends do something, post something or update their status you see it on the frontpage, quite nifty in its own way.

A bit like the LJ friends page idea, but with more variety but less actual content. Fun though.

[js84.livejournal.com]

As a mark of facebook's popularity, I now have some high three-figured number of friends that I know on there. On LJ there is just no one else I can add as a friend and most of those that I do have are the gamer types who don't share any of my interests.

[matgb]

Aye; all my new friends in London are on Facebook except those I'm meeting through LJ friends. Admittedly, I get on better with the new LJ friends but...

What got me was when I got an email I'd been added at work, logged in, and saw the picture of the guy sat behind me in the office. Cool, but freaky.

Here via NHW

[redfiona99.livejournal.com]

I find blogging very difficult on Facebook, mostly because its for my RL friends who are quite often the people I rant about being idiots on my LJ.

However, Facebook is fantastic for organising things, because, since I'm at uni, everyone has an e-mail account and internet access and it's therefore cheaper than ringing and texting.

Facebook is also one of those nouns that's been verbed, much like google, which I also find really interesting.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

At the moment I'm vaguely using all three (LJ Myspazz and Facebook). Myspace is for the musos I know, and keeping up with bands I like. Facebook is currently for catching up on the people I was at uni with. LJ (at the moment at least) is for meeting interesting and eloquent people that I don't see very often, if at all.

As I can RSS any journal entries into facebook I don't see why I should leave LJ just yet.

Re: Here via NHW

[matgb]

Ah, see, my LJ started out as a way to keep in touch of real life friends; most of the people I wanted to keep track of from university are on here, and I have some filters if I really want to bitch; messes things up when you move across the country and your online friends become RL friends but that's a proof it works, really.

I started using FB mostly for activist purposes, half of my friends are fellow LibDems, but I'm fairly hooked on it overall now. And yeah, it's becoming incredibly succesful, which I think is good. Partially because I can keep track of people I haven't seen or who would never LJ; like my sister, for example.

[matgb]

Oh, I'm not in any way suggesting anyone should leave LJ completely; I plan to self host my journal, and probably cross post content. But there will, over time, be less and less new LJ people, less new interesting people to meet; they'll all be on Facebook instead.

I met Debi in a club and got to know her through LJ; if I meet someone under similar circumstances today, it'll be more likely to be through Fb; this isn't a problem with me, but I do wish LJ hadn't dropped the ball (that's back in the Danga days - 6A have merely killed it completely.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

FB (at least on first appearences- which is what counts to new users) seems to be much more about communicating with people you have RL connections with (and you then start getting to know FOAFs, etc), whereas LJ has a "friend anyone who looks interesting" attitude to this- maybe because it appears more blog/forum oriented than FB, which seems more like the online equivalent of passing notes between friends in class.

New users will be immediately looking for people they already know. If you make it easy (like sending out requests to every member already in your email address book) you'll attract more people. While LJ makes it easy to get to know people once you're here, getting started is much more awkward. (If I didn't know IB's LJ handle it would have been almost impossible).

Myspazz is just a big competition to get the biggest friendslist, but never actually interact with any significant proportion of it. (Which just seems pointless to me).

While LJ will survive FB has already pretty much killed off Friends Reunited.

[karis-uk.livejournal.com]

I admit - I find updating facebook a lot easier than LJ. The status update is quite nice as I can put 'I'm still alive' style notes up fairly frequently, whereas I'm always put off doing that on LJ, as I'm the kind of person that waits until I actually have something to say before posting and then when something happens that's worth writing about I'm normally too busy to post!
I also like the photo options on facebook - something that LJ sucks at quite frankly, as having to upload them on a different site and then link to is a pain in the proverbial. Facebook is definately far superior to Myspazz in content, design, reliability and privacy.
Facebook is the first site I've ever used my real name on - and it's quite nice as it does link very well into real life. Not planning on ditching LJ anytime soon but like having two different options to use.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I'd disagree that the solution to LJ's problems is to move to another centralised social network.

The root cause of the problem is the centralised control social networks on a single domain require. That'll always mean the many users are always at the mercy of the few running things. It may be good at site X for a while, but eventually site X will annoy you in ways you can't do anything about, and the bigger the site is the more locked into it you'll feel.

The solution is distributed networks. Someone will get a version right one day and the difference will be between living in an apartment and owning your own home.

[andrewducker]

The problem is that you don't see all of it, because they present a selection of what's going on not everything, you don't see it in an easily readable fashion, and you can't filter it if you have a lot of friends.

[matgb]

I had meant to do a follow up post about those points, but combined LJ outage + life + me being lazy means I've not got around to it. So yes, I agree. To get around it, I've got my preferences set to have status, posted items and notes show as little as possible, and instead view them separately - as three different, mini, 'friends pages'. I also have close friends set to high priority, and people I barely know set to low priority, makes it easier to keep track of things.

Hopefully as the site develops they'll allow for filtering and post level security in the same was as LJ does, at some point I may even suggest it to them.

sorry for the delayed reponse though.

[matgb]

Catching up. Yes, agree completely; a distributed network would be the ideal. IT's hopefully what we'll be working on at Journal Press / lj2wordpress when we've time/inclination/ability -- take a lot of the LJ core ideas about networking, and have an open model for providing data formats so people can distribute their information and store it were they want.

But for now, a fairly good one platform model like Facebook is going to be where it's at; distributed networks requires users with technical skills; once we gcan get over that hurdle, then we'll be fine.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I'm watching lj2wordpress, but like lots, I don't find the time to contribute much. I've a feeling that starting from scratch instead of shoehorning WordPress into the job would probably be a better approach, but we will see.

[andrewducker]

Pfft, no need to dash back and respond to stuff :->

I actually get my status updates on LJ via the miracle of RSS. Which makes it a lot more useful to me, I have to agree...

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! I'll be looking into it...

need help

[backasswardz.livejournal.com]

I went to check it and even failed to register an account: it requires the INVITE CODE I don't have. Then I failed to figure out where to get it - HELP just doesn't work on the site. FAQ doesn't exist there at all.
Could you explain how to get it, please?

Thanks in advance.

Re: need help

[backasswardz.livejournal.com]

ahealen(mail sign)gmail.com