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[bryant]

Doc Searls makes a really good point about the nature of weblogs, and I think it's relevant to why I chose to move my daily meanderings off of LiveJournal. (Yes, I know some of you are reading them there. Don't distract me.) He says, inspired by this comment by Clay Shirky, that weblogs are like radio. Webloggers are broadcasting to the world, rather than having a conversation with their readers. And you know, that's pretty much true.

LiveJournal is much more oriented towards conversations. The community feature is perhaps the most obvious facet of this, but the friends pages are another one. You create a community with your friends page. I've had, on occasion, the experience of being surprised that two people on my friends page don't know each other -- "but they post right next to each other! How odd!" And, of course, since everyone can see who you're friends with, there's a tendency for friend groups to overlap like crazed Venn diagrams. It'd be kind of fun to crunch some numbers on that, see if it's possible to find the friend clusters and how much they overlap, but I don't really have the techniques.

I'd be curious to hear from any of my LJ readers: does my journal there feel any different than anyone else's? Do you notice that I'm not really writing for that particular submedium? Do I look odd on your friends list, besides that I have links in all my titles and I ramble on at great length?

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: what I say below about LJ could be construed as negative. Honestly, to me, it's neither complimentary or derogatory, just neutral observations.

One thing I'll put up as an appendix to all this, building off of your "Venn diagram" Friends list point: Livejournal, by nature of the Friends list, is incredibly incestuous. And it tends to attract people from walks of life and hobbies that encourage such insular behaviors: various forms of fandom, hardcore programming-geeks, polyamory and other alternative sexual lifestyles, misunderstood high school students, etc.

Also, I've noticed that Livejournal is more often an ode to oneself than anything else (just hit random and see how many self-obsessed teenagers you get before you quit in disgust). It's made for narcissists and voyeurs. "Look how big my Friends list is! Look how many comments I got on this post!" Value is determined by number of hits; look at some of the controversies people have had about Friends dropping them from their lists.

And so this is all the more reason to note that I think that your journal, as well as that of many of my Friends', by not manufacturing that need for approval, is quite different from the Livejournal norm.

Again, my intent here is not to antagonize but instead to investigate why Livejournal is different from other blogs. Disclaimer! :)

[ambar.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd say your entries are average to short, compared to what else pops up on my friends listing. What's unusual is the frequency of postings, and how they are never (or almost never, but I honestly can't recall one offhand) about your internal/emotional state.

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

Your posts are different - but in a good way.

Most people are posting about events in their life or their current emotional state. Which is great - my number one reason for using livejournal is to keep in touch with people that I don't talk to regularly, and this accomplishes that purpose.

But your posts have much more content, as in things to read and think about. And I like being passed on these memes. I don't always feel a need to comment on them, and they're not as community-ish, but I read a lot of them.

Livejournal is, and this isn't inconsiderable, a very convenient place for me to gather disparate broadcasts from people I care about. I'm very cranky about having Yet Another Web Page to click on weekly or daily - but with livejournal, they're all there in one place. It's the big mall of weblogs, which beats driving all over town.

Your compromise, with (I assume) auto-reposting to LJ, suits me just fine, because I get the content I want in the convenient LJ package.

[merlinofchaos]

Web journals are inherently narcissistic, and the amount of irritation this narcissism provides is almost entirely tied to the ability and the ego of the writer.

Amateur, low-esteem high-ego teenagers who don't know any better broadcast it in a pure, painfully written form. Something most of the people in my own social circle have grown beyond through experience and the absorption of all the similar things that came about in their own youth.

More professional narcissism comes in the form of people who actually can write well, and have their logs for a variety of reasons, but the reason generally centers on "I want to express my opinion.".

The reason I like LiveJournal is that it's two way. Expressing opinion with no feedback is somewhat unfulfilling -- there's no contradiction with the opinion expressed, and therefore it becomes set as the correct one (until future experiences offer a new light to see things in, thus modifying the opinion.)

Other, more traditional (that's a laugh) web logs are generally more one way. Even if they have comment systems, they're for a limited audience. Why? Because they're people who specifically choose to come read your web log on a regular basis, for whatever reason. With LJ, it's a lot lazier. I can collect the opinions and events and emotions of everyone I know who happens to post, and it's one easy click. It adds an extra layer of impersonality to it: "I broadcast to whomever will read it, and because of the type of forum, my audience is likely bigger."

I started my LiveJournal with sort of an internal protest. Is my ego really so big that I feel the need to broadcast my opinion? On the other hand, I *like* having the semi-personal view of my friends through their logs, the understanding of what they happen to be thinking at any given time and what's going on in their lives. I can feel a little bit up to date even if I happen to be so busy that I'm out of touch. Sure, it depersonalizes the information, but when we do get together, instead of the generic "How's it going?" I can ask "So how did that event you posted about go?" and while I may have fewer conversations with those people, I think they're higher quality conversations because I have a better idea of what *to* talk about. So I figured I'd give other people the same thing with me. People can now check my livejournal and see what I've been up to.

Narcissistic? Yea, I guess so. What kind of writer doesn't want an audience, right? And if there's anything a writer needs, it's a good, solid ego. If you don't have one (which is an issue I have in my own writing) then one has to be built, and it seems to be a decent way of doing it, because the forum is both personal and impersonal at the same time.