(Live)Journalling and the Tools of Community
As the events of Strikethrough 2007 continue to play out and their echoes resonate in our communities, I think it's worthwhile to consider the effects of all of this on our community.
For, after all, what is livejournal in our experience but a community? It isn't a blog or even a journal for most of us who approach it fannishly. If all we wanted to do was get the word out and maybe interact with a few commenters, we would all be on blogger or blogging at our own host. (Note, I do that as well -- it is a very different experience!)
What draws so many fans into livejournal is not the ease of use (I would actually dispute this as LJ has one of the most labyrinthine customization systems out there!) or the fancy features (Gizmo LJ Talk for teh win!). Rather, I see that fans come to LJ for the prospects for creativity, reinforcement, synergy and critical mass. It's the combination of these factors that make LJ the default site for many fandom subgroups because these elements make it easy for us to nurture and sustain our communities.
Very often one of the first things that brings a fan to LJ is creative content already here or the prospect of being able to post their content (stories, fanart, vids, etc.) in the journal. There are many alternatives to LJ as a creative content host (not even going to get into the whole FanLib discussion here!) including fandom archives, individual archives, message boards, commercial hosts and blogging sites. LJ is probably not the ideal site for archiving creative materials, but it does provide several critical tools that are helpful for creators and their audience including commenting, tagging, privacy levels and the ability to post in group spaces as well as individually.
Reinforcement: LJ isn't alone in providing this, but it does a great job compared to a lot of other fandom sites. The commenting feature is fairly robust (with ability to screen comments, to reply in threads, to quote and use other markup). But reinforcing doesn't stop there: LJ also features the ability to create memories, cross-post content or recommendations of content to other communities within the site. This leads to the next point.
Synergy: there's a wonderful point where things become bigger than the individuals behind them ever imagined. Livejournal fandom demonstrates this in many aspects: communities introduce you to other members sharing common interests, features such as "friend of a friend" allow you to follow those aspects even more widely, the clickable interests on profile pages open up the door to even more possibilities. LJ's further ability to add RSS feeds draws additional interest from outside the site but the vast majority of this synergy reinforces LJ as a (semi-)closed community of fans. It's entirely possible to spend your entire LJ life within the confine of a few dozen individual and group journals, never looking farther. But it's far more likely, due to the synergy of the system, to start out small and grow your LJ network to a sprawling size.
LJ further benefits from a critical mass of fandom presence in many major fandoms: a search reveals at least 376 Harry Potter-related communities while there are 398 Stargate-interested communities, Smallville shows up in 399 communities' interests, 396 communities relate to LotR, etc. As fandom_counts reveals, there are tens of thousands of fans active on the site (28307 journals have joined the community at this point). While it's important to note that LJ is not the be-all and end-all of fandom (and that many fandoms and fan subgroups have high-profile communities entirely outside the LJ sphere), it's still a powerful fannish vehicle because you can find just about anything you're interested in on LJ (if the LJ search system fails you, there's always ljseek.com and regular Google search, but I find the word-of-mouth and friends system to be the most reliable referrer system around).
But any analysis of why LJ works for fandom that concentrates mostly on the mechanics is insufficient. It's the last area, and in particular, the individuals who contribute to that critical mass, that make LJ such a special place for fandom. Greatestjournal, Journalfen and other sites run on the same software base as LJ but don't seem to enjoy even half the success in the fannish community (well, except for the joys of fandom wank). And here's the important part: as long as LJ and Six Apart focus more on technology, than on the members of their community, they will risk losing the goodwill of the vibrant community to which they play host. For, after all, if fandom can get its act together enough to protest the events of Strikethrough 2007, fans can also get together enough to migrate, en masse, to one or more of the technologically equivalent alternatives.
Moral? The successful Web2.0 dotcom listens to and cultivates its membership, especially the more intense and avid users. Fans fit that bill within LJ (which is not the teens-only haven that TPTB seem to envision) and should be incorporated into a broader attempt to understand and serve the community that powers the site. Treating this site like an alternative to MySpace is not the answer. Better to start by looking within the membership at the same time you're tweaking with the code and features!
(Note: some of what I've said, I now see, echoes the ideas in cordelia_v's eloquent response to Six Apart's CEO. GMTA?)
For, after all, what is livejournal in our experience but a community? It isn't a blog or even a journal for most of us who approach it fannishly. If all we wanted to do was get the word out and maybe interact with a few commenters, we would all be on blogger or blogging at our own host. (Note, I do that as well -- it is a very different experience!)
What draws so many fans into livejournal is not the ease of use (I would actually dispute this as LJ has one of the most labyrinthine customization systems out there!) or the fancy features (Gizmo LJ Talk for teh win!). Rather, I see that fans come to LJ for the prospects for creativity, reinforcement, synergy and critical mass. It's the combination of these factors that make LJ the default site for many fandom subgroups because these elements make it easy for us to nurture and sustain our communities.
Very often one of the first things that brings a fan to LJ is creative content already here or the prospect of being able to post their content (stories, fanart, vids, etc.) in the journal. There are many alternatives to LJ as a creative content host (not even going to get into the whole FanLib discussion here!) including fandom archives, individual archives, message boards, commercial hosts and blogging sites. LJ is probably not the ideal site for archiving creative materials, but it does provide several critical tools that are helpful for creators and their audience including commenting, tagging, privacy levels and the ability to post in group spaces as well as individually.
Reinforcement: LJ isn't alone in providing this, but it does a great job compared to a lot of other fandom sites. The commenting feature is fairly robust (with ability to screen comments, to reply in threads, to quote and use other markup). But reinforcing doesn't stop there: LJ also features the ability to create memories, cross-post content or recommendations of content to other communities within the site. This leads to the next point.
Synergy: there's a wonderful point where things become bigger than the individuals behind them ever imagined. Livejournal fandom demonstrates this in many aspects: communities introduce you to other members sharing common interests, features such as "friend of a friend" allow you to follow those aspects even more widely, the clickable interests on profile pages open up the door to even more possibilities. LJ's further ability to add RSS feeds draws additional interest from outside the site but the vast majority of this synergy reinforces LJ as a (semi-)closed community of fans. It's entirely possible to spend your entire LJ life within the confine of a few dozen individual and group journals, never looking farther. But it's far more likely, due to the synergy of the system, to start out small and grow your LJ network to a sprawling size.
LJ further benefits from a critical mass of fandom presence in many major fandoms: a search reveals at least 376 Harry Potter-related communities while there are 398 Stargate-interested communities, Smallville shows up in 399 communities' interests, 396 communities relate to LotR, etc. As fandom_counts reveals, there are tens of thousands of fans active on the site (28307 journals have joined the community at this point). While it's important to note that LJ is not the be-all and end-all of fandom (and that many fandoms and fan subgroups have high-profile communities entirely outside the LJ sphere), it's still a powerful fannish vehicle because you can find just about anything you're interested in on LJ (if the LJ search system fails you, there's always ljseek.com and regular Google search, but I find the word-of-mouth and friends system to be the most reliable referrer system around).
But any analysis of why LJ works for fandom that concentrates mostly on the mechanics is insufficient. It's the last area, and in particular, the individuals who contribute to that critical mass, that make LJ such a special place for fandom. Greatestjournal, Journalfen and other sites run on the same software base as LJ but don't seem to enjoy even half the success in the fannish community (well, except for the joys of fandom wank). And here's the important part: as long as LJ and Six Apart focus more on technology, than on the members of their community, they will risk losing the goodwill of the vibrant community to which they play host. For, after all, if fandom can get its act together enough to protest the events of Strikethrough 2007, fans can also get together enough to migrate, en masse, to one or more of the technologically equivalent alternatives.
Moral? The successful Web2.0 dotcom listens to and cultivates its membership, especially the more intense and avid users. Fans fit that bill within LJ (which is not the teens-only haven that TPTB seem to envision) and should be incorporated into a broader attempt to understand and serve the community that powers the site. Treating this site like an alternative to MySpace is not the answer. Better to start by looking within the membership at the same time you're tweaking with the code and features!
(Note: some of what I've said, I now see, echoes the ideas in cordelia_v's eloquent response to Six Apart's CEO. GMTA?)