I’ve been thinking about blogging recently and how it’s changed over the years.
I started blogging on Livejournal ten years ago. The thing I loved about it was the sense of community that existed – I’d arrived there along with a bunch of others from another online forum, and before long I’d made some really good friends there. In the early days there were times when the conversations going on in the comments on a blog post were often more entertaining than the original post itself.
But a few years ago something changed – people started drifting off to other sites, predominantly Facebook. The one thriving hub of activity that was my LJ friends page started to drop off.
I was as much to blame as anyone, I’ll be the first to admit. The lure of the shiny meant more time on Facebook and the weird kid on the block Twitter, with its odd insistence on 140 characters or fewer.
It made sense, in a way. Livejournal was a place where groups of friends would congregate for a chat. Facebook made it easier to share photos and find your real-life friends to go with your online friends. People who’d never have gone near LJ in a million years were now online. It had the now ubiquitous ‘like’ button, which meant that you didn’t need to actually interact with the poster, a quick click to show you’d been there and move on. Times were changing.
I miss the old days of LJ. My friends are now scattered across different social networks. Some now live exclusively on FB, some go between that and Twitter, some still hang out on LJ and some have ventured into the side new world of Google+
Me? I’m all over the place. Facebook for people I know in real life, or who only live there – often for them Facebook *is* the internet. Twitter for the random stream of consciousness. LJ for the occasional post. Flickr for photos, GoodReads for books, the list is ever-growing.
I’ve also been tinkering with G+ since it started and am starting to get a real feeling of community there. Could it be the next LiveJournal? Should it be? G+ has its quirks too – it doesn’t like you cross-posting content *out*, but is more than happy to pull content in. I can’t use automation to post to G+, whereas I can to Twitter, WordPress, Livejournal and many other sites. My posts on espressococo get automatically tweeted out and cross-posted to LJ. I have to manually add them to Google+, for now.
G+ seems to have the most potential in terms of posting significant content (like blog posts) and interacting with people. I get a few people posting comments or likes here on WP, but nowhere near the level I used to see on LJ.
So, dear reader. Where do you live on the internet? Are you a digital nomad, wandering from site to site? Or have you set down roots?
espresso coco 
I’m struggling with the lot, or should I say, failing with social media altogether. I like to think it’s because I’ve got so much else going on around me now, but the next few months should sort that out. If it continues as is, I’m seriously going to have to consider settling on one thing only, and I figure that will be the good old book of face. 🙂
I have days like that but my drug of choice would be twitter I think. Facebook for me is too full of game invites and people sharing stuff which implores you to ‘like or be a bad person ‘. That could just be my timeline though!
I’m a master at ignoring the rubbish. Facebook connects me with my extended family and friends in Australia – it’s vital to me. All that may change when I return there to live next month.
I’ve heard of more and more writers giving up FB and TWitter-I’m on FB less and less and hardly do Twitter anymore. I find a blog great because there I can actually write, not just like, browse, and wonder why I’m wasting time, when I’d rather be writing. Also, people on blogs actually correspond, are interested in feedback, and are more interesting than FB, IMO 🙂
I love twitter for the fast paced, never know what you’ll find next. FB is often just full of game requests or guilt-inducing photos demanding that you like them or you’re a bad parent /person /etc.
I go through phases of thinking of quitting it entirely but have family on the reap find it useful to share photos and other such things.
I love the long-form that blogging here allows, it’d just be nice to build more of a community and get some interaction going.
I do a fair amount of Facebooking, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Goodreads… but the place where I get to interact with a community is definitely WordPress. I think the Reader is outstanding for this and I have a load of people that I interact with that I would never have known without it. My blogging adventures started in Windows Live Spaces though… believe it or not and that is how I met my best friend… who now works for me.
Im a bit all over the place – with two twitter accounts, two blogs (plus one more with you that i need ti sink my teeth into a bit!) two Pinterest accounts, plus numerous other stuff.
Two things though – one, I left FB and have never really looked back. The most annoying thing about FB is now where you have to be a member in order to enter competitions, see where links to you r own blog have come from via there, or see other stuff – I really resent that.
And two, I *think* I have a G+ account, but I have utterly no idea what’s going on there. You think I should give it a go?
I miss LJ. (And I miss you! I need to keep up with my RSS feeds better…)
Not only did I completely miss my TEN FREAKING YEAR LJ anniversary, today I went there to link a specific post (My 10th post, of all things, because a Twitter question reminded me of it) and realized that I joined LJ just over ELEVEN years ago! August 8, 2002 to be exact.
I love the randomness and funny of Twitter. I also love my geek cred of having had my twitter account since April 1, 2007. I like the real people interactions of Facebook, and I like the short reading combined with links to articles. But I really miss LJ. And I have attempted to go back a couple times and it never works. I thin Facebook is just too suited to my ADD that it makes real blogging too much work, but I need to change that.
Heck, I own the Hellziggy.com domain, I should get my money’s worth out of that annual payment, right?
At least I know that if I never update LJ again it will always be there since I have a permanent account.
you should definitely use hellziggy.com. AND blog more. And keep up with RSS.
I’ve also got a perm LJ account, thanks to our sadly-departed friend Greg.