Until the site goes black, I'll be here in some form

I've mostly been spared the whole 'OMG I'm LEAVING!' LJ Drama as some people move on to pastures new - but the post from Jeb 50poundnote and his comment I used for the subject sums it up for me.

As I put it in a response over there to eric_mathgeek's very pertinent comment 'But if I want to say something significant, it's here. Always.'

This. I think what FB etc. missed until very recently (the G+ style groupings - Public, Friends only etc) so I've always tended to share the personal stuff here.

Problem with Twitter/FB/G+ is they are too open, you share to too many people unless you spend ages creating groups. It's not great for that Dooce-level thoughts about how your co-workers or friends or life is pissing you off, or something that really matters to you in a longer-form.

Hence why I stay here for those, and for posting pics/videos I create.

I would also add - those who are leaving - you'll probably be back.

Why? Well LJ might be creaky, but then again Wordpress is creaky and I use that regularly (both com and org). There's not really much new stuff you can add to a blogging platform though, and most of the social media stuff is actually bells and whistles that adds very little...might make it slightly easier or quicker to embed a video or upload an image, but LJ was never about speed or ease of use - hence the HTML tags.

And really all of the mobile platforms suck - Facebook's mobile app belies the fact they sold for silly money (can you say 'bubble'?) and completely sucks with timeouts and connection errors - it was even mentioned as a possible issue in the IPO, and I have it on good account the IOS version isn't much better. Instagram is no Flickr replacement, although I deeply wish there was since Flickr's UI sucks donkey balls - people still use it though, why? Cos it's better than a lot out there, bar maybe Picasa. And the legacy of people's images - like an archive of blog posts. Also Instagram's Android app places a lovely green line on images taken with it's camera. Far from mature.

Twitter only works well if you use another company's apps, which I find a little sad really.

And yes if you're a little tech minded it's easy to put your LJ into Google Reader which has trazillions of apps for it, and actually most browsers on mobiles are so good you can just use your Friend Feed. I do wish they'd open up/develop the API and allow some sort of easy feed reader integration, or at least a decent LJ app - but for posting there is some good ones like LJBeetle - which are better than the flaky Tumblr apps which anyway is mostly full of gore kids and pr0n - Drake was right about Tumblr.

Problem with FB and Twitter I find is mostly one of noise.

I tend to have to lock down my FB to avoid/reduce the crap - certain people are on Acquaintance status or hidden because they basically whore themselves constantly or play annoying games or repost pointless stuff - or seem to have me hidden also.

The inanity (see 'Age of Entitlement' - oh no you can't cos I invented the term ;-) of Twitter pisses me off sometimes, which is why I follow more political stuff there, to balance it out. It's the constant humble bragging that gets me - I can cope with prosaic (I am having a shit etc), but when people are Stepfordising their lives to a scary 1950's housewife degree, well it just turns me off. Seems social media has gone from reporting the truth to Keeping Up With The Joneses in a few years. Again something that rarely happens on LJ.

But certainly you can post about something really serious - say drones or war or gay rights - and quite often get tumbleweed on either. People just don't want to know. Closed minds. Sad. ...which never was the case on LJ, for good or bad people usually put their oar in.

I think the latter sums up LJ for me, and the comment tonethbone picked up about that's it more what people are thinking rather than doing. You might want to update your Foursquare status every 3 minutes or humble brag your life in 140 characters but even as someone who is on those platforms I can see the value in something deeper, more involved and less takeaway...and more private, I see real failings in those platforms as they are building up a sort of temporary massive nation of shallow interaction and involvement...and as we know the more shallow your involvement the easier it is to drop it for a competitor or not really engage at all (see Bearbook, Wave, Buzz, Friendster, G+ etc).

And yes it's never a replacement for real friends - offline or on.

Until the site goes black, I'll be here in some form

I've mostly been spared the whole 'OMG I'm LEAVING!' LJ Drama as some people move on to pastures new - but the post from Jeb 50poundnote and his comment I used for the subject sums it up for me.

As I put it in a response over there to eric_mathgeek's very pertinent comment 'But if I want to say something significant, it's here. Always.'

This. I think what FB etc. missed until very recently (the G+ style groupings - Public, Friends only etc) so I've always tended to share the personal stuff here.

Problem with Twitter/FB/G+ is they are too open, you share to too many people unless you spend ages creating groups. It's not great for that Dooce-level thoughts about how your co-workers or friends or life is pissing you off, or something that really matters to you in a longer-form.

Hence why I stay here for those, and for posting pics/videos I create.

I would also add - those who are leaving - you'll probably be back.

Why? Well LJ might be creaky, but then again Wordpress is creaky and I use that regularly (both com and org). There's not really much new stuff you can add to a blogging platform though, and most of the social media stuff is actually bells and whistles that adds very little...might make it slightly easier or quicker to embed a video or upload an image, but LJ was never about speed or ease of use - hence the HTML tags.

And really all of the mobile platforms suck - Facebook's mobile app belies the fact they sold for silly money (can you say 'bubble'?) and completely sucks with timeouts and connection errors - it was even mentioned as a possible issue in the IPO, and I have it on good account the IOS version isn't much better. Instagram is no Flickr replacement, although I deeply wish there was since Flickr's UI sucks donkey balls - people still use it though, why? Cos it's better than a lot out there, bar maybe Picasa. And the legacy of people's images - like an archive of blog posts. Also Instagram's Android app places a lovely green line on images taken with it's camera. Far from mature.

Twitter only works well if you use another company's apps, which I find a little sad really.

And yes if you're a little tech minded it's easy to put your LJ into Google Reader which has trazillions of apps for it, and actually most browsers on mobiles are so good you can just use your Friend Feed. I do wish they'd open up/develop the API and allow some sort of easy feed reader integration, or at least a decent LJ app - but for posting there is some good ones like LJBeetle - which are better than the flaky Tumblr apps which anyway is mostly full of gore kids and pr0n - Drake was right about Tumblr.

Problem with FB and Twitter I find is mostly one of noise.

I tend to have to lock down my FB to avoid/reduce the crap - certain people are on Acquaintance status or hidden because they basically whore themselves constantly or play annoying games or repost pointless stuff - or seem to have me hidden also.

The inanity (see 'Age of Entitlement' - oh no you can't cos I invented the term ;-) of Twitter pisses me off sometimes, which is why I follow more political stuff there, to balance it out. It's the constant humble bragging that gets me - I can cope with prosaic (I am having a shit etc), but when people are Stepfordising their lives to a scary 1950's housewife degree, well it just turns me off. Seems social media has gone from reporting the truth to Keeping Up With The Joneses in a few years. Again something that rarely happens on LJ.

But certainly you can post about something really serious - say drones or war or gay rights - and quite often get tumbleweed on either. People just don't want to know. Closed minds. Sad. ...which never was the case on LJ, for good or bad people usually put their oar in.

I think the latter sums up LJ for me, and the comment tonethbone picked up about that's it more what people are thinking rather than doing. You might want to update your Foursquare status every 3 minutes or humble brag your life in 140 characters but even as someone who is on those platforms I can see the value in something deeper, more involved and less takeaway...and more private, I see real failings in those platforms as they are building up a sort of temporary massive nation of shallow interaction and involvement...and as we know the more shallow your involvement the easier it is to drop it for a competitor or not really engage at all (see Bearbook, Wave, Buzz, Friendster, G+ etc).

And yes it's never a replacement for real friends - offline or on.

Joining LJ

I love this idea of a Friending Freindzy - without going into my previous post and such negativity from certain quarters, I like the idea of joining people together.

Because I think the idea of something 'dying' is mostly in the mind and one of perception - it's what in my mashup world they call nagaiutb - Not As Good As It Used To Be. A mental idea of past-ures green. Which is actually usually wrong - or more about you or your peer group.

Maybe we should have a bear freindzy? ;-)

Joining LJ

I love this idea of a Friending Freindzy - without going into my previous post and such negativity from certain quarters, I like the idea of joining people together.

Because I think the idea of something 'dying' is mostly in the mind and one of perception - it's what in my mashup world they call nagaiutb - Not As Good As It Used To Be. A mental idea of past-ures green. Which is actually usually wrong - or more about you or your peer group.

Maybe we should have a bear freindzy? ;-)