In the course of my ongoing foray into LiveJournal (making friends and all :-), I keep discovering journals I really should have known about for a while. This hadn't happened mainly due to the fact that I have so far very rarely come across links into (or backlinks out of) LiveJournal (look up Ross's informal survey from last year on this phenomenon).
But it turns out there are social software tinkerers and thinkers in there as well. Exhibit 1 is the recently founded LiveJournal research community, and exhibit 2 is the Sociology of Online Journals community, both of which aggregate posts from a number of individual journal authors and seem to be host to fairly active conversations. I haven't dug deep into them yet, but wanted to highlight the finds.
I have so far very rarely come across links into (or backlinks out of) LiveJournal
this one of the largest problems with lj. there's no journal search, no trackbacks or pingbacks (yet; they're slowly working on it), anon comments can't leave a name/e-mail/url like in mt (although they're also slowly working on an e-mail verification system for non-lj users). i've got a half completed post regarding this that i need to finish.
While I agree that LJ should have journal searching and trackback available by default, you can certainly do journal searching if you use a 3rd party tool to do it. In this sense, it is kind of like Blogger.
Those who use LJ for awhile and who like "pure" weblogs will find a lot to like about the site. It serves as a weblog and RSS newsreader/aggregator all in one. Also, LJ users tend to get more comments, on average, than most webloggers. This is due to the built-in interconnectedness of the site. This interconnectedness comes at a price, however, because there are also unaddressed barriers between LJ journals and external weblog sites. In that sense, LJ is a bit balkanized, too. Then again, similar arguments can be made about Blogger users primarily reading Blogger websites, Userland users reading Userland websites, etc. Some degree of balkanization is de rigeur, with Movable Type appearing to set the standard.
In response to the idea that LJ is slowly working on such problems, I'm not sure that is really the case, though. They have added more features in the last year or so than Blogger, and arguably more than MovableType. What is missing is that most 3rd party weblog developers do not develop for LJ... yet. They certainly should.
1. milk on January 21, 2004 6:08 AM writes...
I have so far very rarely come across links into (or backlinks out of) LiveJournal
this one of the largest problems with lj. there's no journal search, no trackbacks or pingbacks (yet; they're slowly working on it), anon comments can't leave a name/e-mail/url like in mt (although they're also slowly working on an e-mail verification system for non-lj users). i've got a half completed post regarding this that i need to finish.
Permalink to Comment2. Mark Kraft on January 21, 2004 8:50 PM writes...
While I agree that LJ should have journal searching and trackback available by default, you can certainly do journal searching if you use a 3rd party tool to do it. In this sense, it is kind of like Blogger.
Those who use LJ for awhile and who like "pure" weblogs will find a lot to like about the site. It serves as a weblog and RSS newsreader/aggregator all in one. Also, LJ users tend to get more comments, on average, than most webloggers. This is due to the built-in interconnectedness of the site. This interconnectedness comes at a price, however, because there are also unaddressed barriers between LJ journals and external weblog sites. In that sense, LJ is a bit balkanized, too. Then again, similar arguments can be made about Blogger users primarily reading Blogger websites, Userland users reading Userland websites, etc. Some degree of balkanization is de rigeur, with Movable Type appearing to set the standard.
In response to the idea that LJ is slowly working on such problems, I'm not sure that is really the case, though. They have added more features in the last year or so than Blogger, and arguably more than MovableType. What is missing is that most 3rd party weblog developers do not develop for LJ... yet. They certainly should.
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