0xDECAFBAD

It's all spinning wheels and self-doubt until the first pot of coffee.

LiveJournal largely ignored, but why?

Caught this snippet on tweeney.com via JOHO: "...LiveJournal.com (which most weblog news stories overlook for some reason) boasts more than 650,000 [users]..."

Why does everyone seem to ignore LiveJournal? It's very, very, very rare that I see a LiveJournaller's posts linked into the Blogosphere at large. Granted, I know that the median user was a 15 year old female who complains about Mom and her boyfriend, when last I checked. But, as the adage goes: 90% of anything is crap. There are, nevertheless, a good number of worthwhile streams of narrative in that space.

On the other hand, I don't see many of the people behind LJ stepping out and making noise in the Outer Blogosphere either. I think many of them are just plain busy keeping the site afloat, or having lives, and LJ is world enough for them.

But 650,000 users... that's a lot. More than Radio and rivalling Blogger.com. Is there a real qualitative difference in writing between the groups? I would still imagine there's a lot of crap to be found via Blogger.com. I'm not sure about Radio, though, since I get the impression that the 15 year olds have yet to flood into the userbase and its following seems more tilted toward professionals.

But as for the software & service itself... As far as I can see, LJ is one of the easiest paths out there to starting a weblog/journal online. And it was one of the first sites I ever encountered that had a desktop-based client app for posting to it. And, though not prominently placed, they have RSS feeds for every single journal on the site. They're even working RSS aggregation features into the place by gatewaying external RSS feeds in as special LJ users to be added like any other LJ "friend".

So, to me, LJ sounds like a top competitor to every other blog/news aggregation product or service out there - yet I rarely hear about it. Hrm.

Anyone have a theory why?

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Archived Comments

  • Bill
    I've used LiveJournal for over a year now (thelonious), and while a few of the other journals I've read might classify as a weblog, 90% are simply personal journals. I think that's they're main use. Some reasons they're still disconnected from the weblog world might be 1) although they do have RSS feeds, almost no one knows about them; 2) they don't alert services like weblogs.com and blo.gs when they update (and if they did, I can imagine LJ bringing those services to their knees); and 3) it's not that easy to search through the LJ users to find similar interests.. unless you're a paid user. Sometimes on MetaTalk, when the subject of blogging tools, or blogging in general comes up, insomnia from LJ will chime in trying to get LJ some respect, but he never quite succeeds. Unless there's something that comes along, or LJ steps up, to try and integrate them into the blogosphere (ahem), I think they'll continue to remain separate. Sorry to ramble on so long. :)
  • Mark Paschal
    I have seen several weblogs recently with LiveJournals in their blogrolls, which is a notable increase from... well, zero. There is something of a gap, but I think that'll decrease even more when any paid user can add a syndicated journal.
  • Gregory Blake
    I think it's closed nature is very much part of it. Most people who use LJ have no idea what a blog is. I was at a BBQ this last weekend and there were a number of LJ users there and I said, "I don't really use LJ much, I've got my own blog." and just got a blank stare back and then was asked "what's a blog?" (I made some more comments on this over on my web page.)
  • fozbaca
    It is really about the communities and cultures. LJ is about journaling, very internal and personal. Blogging is about the link, very external and public. And a question for you, why did you not try to do the blog of decafbad via your LJ? Also a similar question to ask is why did things like pitas and diarland not really take off in the blog world, they were around before Blogger?
  • F. McSweeny!
    The fact that their system is live for about 30% of an average day might have something to do with it as well.
  • elthar
    F. McSweeny's comment is simple slander and can be neglected. I think fozbaca is closest -- most LJers I know, including myself, focus on the content of the journal itself, and an external link is an occasional thing rather than the raison d'etre of the journal.
  • l.m.orchard
    fozbaca: Well, I think you are pretty close to identifying the difference between decafbad and my LJ. My LJ tends to be less tech geeky and more personal, and my audience there is less interested in the things I do here. Whereas I tend to assume that people who come here want to see what I'm playing with more than other musings and randomity. I suppose it's the culture of LJ, being that it's a tight-knit community and helped to be that way by the software. Out here in the blogosphere at large, things seem to be more loosely flung about and less automatically connected. I keep wanting to bring more LJ features to the blogs out here.
  • Ask Bjoern Hansen
    Over at organica I have a lot of links from blogs. Some weeks ago I played with crawling some LJ journals, but they really didn't have any external links at all. (Compared to the average weblog outside LJ anyway). In other words, I think fozbaca was right on. - ask
  • l.m.orchard
    Strange thing is, I think I use my LJ a bit more bloggishly, and so do many of my friends there. That is, including many links to the outside world. But yeah, many are link-challenged :) But LJ'ers *do* link to lots of things. In fact, LJ has a special spider/tracker page for that: http://www.livejournal.com/meme.bml Of course... well, as you can probably see, the top links will usually be the current handful of popular online quizzes, and maybe a news story or two.
  • l.m.orchard
    Strange thing is, I think I use my LJ a bit more bloggishly, and so do many of my friends there. That is, including many links to the outside world. But yeah, many are link-challenged :) But LJ'ers *do* link to lots of things. In fact, LJ has a special spider/tracker page for that: http://www.livejournal.com/meme.bml Of course... well, as you can probably see, the top links will usually be the current handful of popular online quizzes, and maybe a news story or two.