Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 122 posts

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

#91

Post by evanelias »

coldtea wrote: post #60
5040 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 und…

I think Tumblr lost most of its mojo and following in the exactly inverse scenario: when they (recently) said "no more porn". The backslash was big...

Numerically, that's incorrect. Tumblr includes posts-per-day stats on their /about page, and banning adult content was a drop of about 20-25% of posting volume. While that's a big drop for something that was an overnight change, it's still dwarfed by the drop comparing current stats vs heyday stats of years back.

At peak, going by public posts/day stats, Tumblr was about 5x larger than at present. It was more of a slow bleed than a sudden drop-off though.

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

#92

Post by secabeen »

JohnBooty wrote: post #72

I will unabashedly say that the "Livejournal era" was my favorite era of the internet to date. You can still blog in 2019, obviously, on LJ or elsewhere. But your friends aren't going to read it. That's why LJ worked: it was both a blogging platform and an aggregated feed of your LJ friends' blog posts, and you all had a more or less equal ability to comment and respond to each other. Crucially, LJ had enough markets…

LJ also had a culture of longer, more introspective posts. Facebook encourages the light, picture-plus-a-quick comment post because they're easy to make. LJ was much more comfortable for deeper engagement.

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

#93

Post by criddell »

tracker1 wrote: post #54
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.

I find a lot of that has moved to Medium these days... though there is plenty of self-promotion and marketing, there's also a great deal of good content.

Medium feels like it's dying to me. I used to end up there many times a week. Now I find myself there a couple times a month.

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

#94

Post by smsm42 »

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).

It also has to do with LJ being taken over people who don't understand the users, don't care about the users (beyond a couple of high-value ad-churning ones) and didn't value the communities existing there while they existed, seeing LJ solely as a traffic monetization platform. So people moved on. And of course the move to Russia - with all content being now rules by Russian law, with its internationally famous regard to human rights and freedom of speech - hasn't helped much for international users either. But I think the main decline started when the platform moved from people for whom it was a beloved child to people to whom it was just a milking cow for producing ad dollars. All we see now is just the final stages of that decline.

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

#95

Post by smsm42 »

oytis wrote: post #16
chaosite wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is Telegram similar to Facebook or LiveJournal?

In how people use it (isn't it the most important thing about a social network?). In Telegram channels one can find really interesting blogs about pretty much everything from evolutionary biology to book reviews or music theory. It is very similar to how people used to use LiveJournal and quite unlike how people use Facebook (mostly posting photos or tiny pieces of text about themselves).

I think Telegram is very unfortunate platform for blogging. Discovery is mostly nonexistent, and access from the web to it is impossible, you need a separate client to consume it. Then again, people manage to blog on Twitter, so Telegram certainly would be an upgrade. But I wish real blogging platforms - like yes, Dreamwidth - would get more love and popularity.

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

#96

Post by IdiocyInAction »

CM30 wrote: post #53
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.

Feels like the idea of doing a hobby for the sake of it seems to have been lost in general. Everything's always got to be about 'making it your main job' or 'turning it into a million dollar business' or what not. And yeah, I miss that too. Especially given how much more entertaining it often is to read a post by an interested expert than by someone trying to make a quick buck.

It's because the view of the internet has changed. The internet has slowly changed from a global forum to a giant marketplace, which has the purpose of serving ads and selling products.

Back in the day, making money of your blog wasn't an option. Now, it is, which is why most people are doing it for money.

Unfortunately, we'll probably never get the old internet back. Eternal september has happened.

But you have to see the flipside too: There's never been more content. You can still get great things out of the internet, you just have to curate it (more) now.

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

#97

Post by pnathan »

smsm42 wrote: post #94
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).

It also has to do with LJ being taken over people who don't understand the users, don't care about the users (beyond a couple of high-value ad-churning ones) and didn't value the communities existing there while they existed, seeing LJ solely as a traffic monetization platform. So people moved on. And of course the move to Russia - with all content being now rules by Russian law, with its internationally famous regar…

yes, I was peripherally involved with that world, and fundamentally there was a disinterest in the users prior to the Russian takeover - and with the Russian takeover, it was clear that things weren't okay anymore.

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

#98

Post by pnathan »

JohnBooty wrote: post #72

I will unabashedly say that the "Livejournal era" was my favorite era of the internet to date. You can still blog in 2019, obviously, on LJ or elsewhere. But your friends aren't going to read it. That's why LJ worked: it was both a blogging platform and an aggregated feed of your LJ friends' blog posts, and you all had a more or less equal ability to comment and respond to each other. Crucially, LJ had enough markets…

LJ had a much more pleasant culture in terms of interacting with strangers. I'd call that an artifact of the number of weirdos, along with the pre-Eternal September Internet world in general. The text orientation also helped. There were also a lot of highly knowledgeable people: professors and the like.

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

#99

Post by dluan »

jqt wrote: post #79

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Scree... The guy just used archive.org and posted a version with broken css as if it was a regular past screenshot of the site.

I don't think many people keep screenshots of their livejournals around.

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

#100

Post by toyg »

pnathan wrote: post #98
JohnBooty wrote: post #72

I will unabashedly say that the "Livejournal era" was my favorite era of the internet to date. You can still blog in 2019, obviously, on LJ or elsewhere. But your friends aren't going to read it. That's why LJ worked: it was both a blogging platform and an aggregated feed of your LJ friends' blog posts, and you all had a more or less equal ability to comment and respond to each other. Crucially, LJ had enough markets…

LJ had a much more pleasant culture in terms of interacting with strangers. I'd call that an artifact of the number of weirdos, along with the pre-Eternal September Internet world in general. The text orientation also helped. There were also a lot of highly knowledgeable people: professors and the like.

Eternal September started in 1993, according to wikipedia. It was definitely in common usage by 1995. LiveJournal started in 1999.

I get what you were trying to say, but you used the wrong signpost. The web remained a relatively civil place until the mid-00s; there were trolls and astroturfers, but they were mostly contained. The real culture shift happened with social networks and mobile, in the late ‘00s, when even people who couldn’t operate a desktop started to be online 24/7.

Post reply on HN