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“The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

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Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#31

Post by ghaff »

ubermonkey wrote: post #27
AsyncAwait wrote: post #4

As for the headline, I don't know what Linux lost. Loss implies that you had it at some point, but Linux never really had the desktop, (sadly), so it could not have lost it. It still dominates in the server, supercomputer & embedded markets.

I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inherent to Win98 on laptops that I switched to the Mac, largely because a co-worker was using one and I could SEE how much it didn't crash, and how sleep actually WORKED, and how good the hardware was, etc. Since my job at the time was primarily project management…

At some point in the 2000s, it may have been an OSCON, I observed the incredibly high proportion of MacBooks being used by attendees. It was effectively a *nix laptop that worked.

It’s at least plausible to think that absent OS X, a lot of developers would have made do with then still very rough around the edges (desktop) Linux and, given that level of interest, it would have improved at a greater rate.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#32

Post by seniorivn »

oytis wrote: post #8

In Russia the popularity of livejournal has also dropped with the advent of Facebook, and there it has nothing to do with obscene fan fiction. Facebook has just found a more addictive model with a lower entry barrier. On the bright side we now have Telegram, which allows for a similar communication style, just without comments (which is IMO a good thing as well).

Strongly disagree. The reason people moved from livejournal is simply company policies, they messed with peoples freedoms. People got used to be able to say whatever they want and rely on ratings by popularity, but LJ excluded some political bloggers from public ratings and limited their abilities to grow. The audience didn't like it and started to look around for alternatives. In addition at that time LJ was already heavily outdated in terms of design and usability.

Summing up it's not because facebook was better, it's because livejournal got worse, and secondarily forgot to become better technically.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#33

Post by ghaff »

username223 wrote: post #23
robjan wrote: post #12

It seems that blogging for the sake of blogging has been mostly lost, to be honest. I miss the time when blogs were more than self promotion and content marketing.

Sturgeon's Law applies as much as it always has, but the personal blogs that existed before "content marketing" became a thing are mostly still around. Just ignore tech-of-the-moment.google.com/blog.

With some exceptions many people just aren’t aware of them because it’s the blogs run as businesses, or by people who are otherwise at least Internet famous, who command outsize attention. It also increasingly makes sense to plug into publications, etc. with promotion engines for many types of content. I personally publish fewer things in my own blog than I used to.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#34

Post by oytis »

simula67 wrote: post #29
oytis wrote: post #8

In Russia the popularity of livejournal has also dropped with the advent of Facebook, and there it has nothing to do with obscene fan fiction. Facebook has just found a more addictive model with a lower entry barrier. On the bright side we now have Telegram, which allows for a similar communication style, just without comments (which is IMO a good thing as well).

Isn't vk more popular than Facebook in Russia ?

Oh yes, VK as well. The same model as Facebook. Somehow people whom I used to read on LJ would tend to migrate to Facebook rather than VK, but that can be just my bias. In general VK is more popular, true.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#35

Post by chrisfinazzo »

ubermonkey wrote: post #27
AsyncAwait wrote: post #4

As for the headline, I don't know what Linux lost. Loss implies that you had it at some point, but Linux never really had the desktop, (sadly), so it could not have lost it. It still dominates in the server, supercomputer & embedded markets.

I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inherent to Win98 on laptops that I switched to the Mac, largely because a co-worker was using one and I could SEE how much it didn't crash, and how sleep actually WORKED, and how good the hardware was, etc. Since my job at the time was primarily project management…

It's not hard to imagine Apple would have died in very short order.

If this happened, and Jobs was still there, I suspect some number of those people who eventually switched might have given NeXTSTEP serious consideration, as all the underpinnings of a good UNIX system were in place.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#36

Post by 5040 »

coldtea wrote: post #6
nailer wrote: post #3

> LiveJournal exodus seemed to be triggered in part by actions like the mass banning of several figures in the X-rated Harry Potter fanfiction community under pressure from religious groups (ostensibly for writing erotic stories about underage characters). Well sure, but a large part of the regular userbase (not religious folk) were not comfortable with adults writing pornography about fictional children, and having…

> Well sure, but a large part of the regular userbase (not religious folk) were not comfortable with adults writing pornography about fictional children, and having a LiveJournal became not cool because of that. I seriously doubt that. It might have made it not "safe" for some small circles, but hardly "not cool" to the coolness-seeking people. Teenagers for example and younger people could hardly care about that. (T…

>I seriously doubt that. It might have made it not "safe" for some small circles, but hardly "not cool" to the coolness-seeking people. Teenagers for example and younger people could hardly care about that.

Sites can get a negative reputation for being the place where certain strange and distasteful fanbases gather. In time, outsiders might come to identify the site with these groups inside of it making the place undesirable. Compare Tumblr.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#37

Post by chrisfinazzo »

devereaux wrote: post #30
ubermonkey wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. In the late 90s I got so worn out with stability issues inherent to Win98 on laptops that I switched to the Mac, largely because a co-worker was using one and I could SEE how much it didn't crash, and how sleep actually WORKED, and how good the hardware was, etc. Since my job at the time was primarily project management…

> I'd love to peek at the alternate universe wherein Apple doesn't migrate to the FreeBSD-based OSX. (…) > I feel like that was the moment that the Mac pulled in a lot of very technical and very influential people, with good reason You can look right now at what's happening to these very technical people. The ones I know are giving up on Apple and moving to Microsoft instead: because the WSL subsystem works, and the…

WSL certainly helps as the same or very similar toolchain works everywhere, but what does the keyboard have to do with anything?

Any keyboard issues w/ Apple are hardware reliability concerns, but that's really a separate issue, I think.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#38

Post by treve »

LJ gave us OpenID, Memcached, MogileFS and Gearman. I was a fan of all of them. Such amazing technologies. OpenID specifically was (to me) such a BIG idea that I was convinced it would take over authentication systems everywhere. On the practical side I was a huge Memcached fan and used Gearman quite a bit too. It really expanded for me what was possible with PHP. Super nostalgic for that time. It felt like a new frontier.

Standards for blogging API's also blew my mind. Metaweblog and Blogger API was pretty awesome.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#39

Post by oytis »

LukeShu wrote: post #20
emilsedgh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux kernel has a good presence on the mobile through Android but the Linux ecosystem aka GNU/Linux does not. And it seems that Google has plans to swap Linux with Fuschia in the long term.

Linux is the kernel. The rest of it is... not Linux. It's almost like RMS had a point with the rant that he gets mocked for.

Yes, sounds kind of funny to me. If you're building an embedded system with busybox, it's proper GNU/Linux, because busybox is GNU. But once you replace it with Toybox, it becomes not-quite-Linux.

Re: “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered, then lost, blogging

#40

Post by oytis »

seniorivn wrote: post #32
oytis wrote: post #8

In Russia the popularity of livejournal has also dropped with the advent of Facebook, and there it has nothing to do with obscene fan fiction. Facebook has just found a more addictive model with a lower entry barrier. On the bright side we now have Telegram, which allows for a similar communication style, just without comments (which is IMO a good thing as well).

Strongly disagree. The reason people moved from livejournal is simply company policies, they messed with peoples freedoms. People got used to be able to say whatever they want and rely on ratings by popularity, but LJ excluded some political bloggers from public ratings and limited their abilities to grow. The audience didn't like it and started to look around for alternatives. In addition at that time LJ was already…

Yes, there were some reasons for dissent, but still most people chose to migrate to Facebook, and not to Dreamwidth or Blogspot, which were closer alternatives to LJ.
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