adders: signs of LJ life detected

[adderslj]

Hello. Me again.

Yes, I'm still here. Yes, I'm still reading (and commenting sometimes) on LJ. But no, I'm not using it very much. And that bothers me. Why?

Well, while I was at Le Web 3 in Paris at the tail end of last year, I had the chance to catch up with the CEO of Six Apart, as we're enterprise customers of theirs. One of the things he talked about was the sale of LJ to SUP, and Chris prefaced the discussion with "I know you're a Livejournal user, but…"

And that left me thinking: am I really a Livejournal user any more? I mean, I rarely ever post here, and most of the time it's just a push from my Vox. And it's not as if I'm short on blogs to maintain:

One Man & His Blog
Tincan Alley
Leafshine: Lust for Flower
Coffee & Complexity
Fishnets & Fedoras

As you can see, the last two are a little under-maintained right now. :)

So, sensibly speaking, I should just give up on LJ. But I can't quite bring myself to do so, and here's why…

In many ways , LJ is where it all began for me. My career trajectory can be clearly traced from the moment I walked into the Felix office at Imperial College back in 1989. The professional track looks like:

Felix - Cub - The Publican - Hotel & Restaurant - Estates Gazette - GRID

And the hobby track:

Felix - Arcane - White Wolf - Livejournal - Blogging

And they come together in my current role as the blogging head of a large publishing company. I started this Livejournal because loads of people I was associating with online in the early part of this decade were using it, and most of them were gaming geeks in general, and White Wolf geeks in particular.

It was this place that I first discovered blogging and the publishing power it holds. It was here I first started developing the ideas which I'm using day to day in my day job. And just abandoning it seems a little... ungrateful.

And besides, there are plenty of people I know and like on here still, and whom I'd like to be interacting with a little more often.

I've dropped Xjournal back into my dock, so lets see if I can't be a little more active again.

Comments

[binidj.livejournal.com]

The thing I especially like about LJ is the sense of community and utility that is missing from, say, Blogger (big on the utility, not so much on the community) and Facebook (somewhat random on the community and rubbish with the utility).

Incidentally, the chap who writes Feather Duster is an in-game pal of mine from Moonglade (he keeps a couple of alts in my guild to kick back when he's not raiding) ... small World (of Warcraft) isn't it? =)

[adders.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. LJ, much like Vox (which is pretty clearly Spawn of LJ), uses blogs as a community tool, rather than a publishing tool.

There's more input needed than there is with, say, Facebook, but I'd like to think there was more to be had out of it as a result.

Blogger, on the other hand, is clearly blog as publishing tool, and it's up to you to build a community specifically around your blog.

[rougeforever.livejournal.com]

see, I read your stuff on your other blogs that I have syndicated (or you do, rather) but this is so much easier to comment on.

Have some free community, on me :)

[rebby.livejournal.com]

On a purely selfish point we don't have any of those others, so like seeing you here.