So I've returned to LiveJournal
So pinch me. I've taken up to LiveJournaling due to an obscure command line client called Charm that allows me to post to LJ through a Vim front end. Pretty cool, and quite useful.
The author of this client, Lydia Leong, is quite interesting. She's a Research Director at Gartner who has a background in software engineering. Her LJ account was started in 2001, so she must have created it before entering the corporate world -- at least that's my guess.
Which brings me to an interesting thought. As much as my job pushes me towards using Twitter and Facebook professionally, I keep returning to the geekier social media tools -- ones with a lot of history. That means Reddit, IRC, Usenet -- and now LiveJournal.
What's the big deal about that? Just this: as much as modern social networks pay my salary, they don't entirely feel "home" to me. And hey, I'll admit it. Once you use once social media tool, you've used them all. Twitter is just Usenet with a different protocol. But at the end of the day, it's all about the users and how they use it.
Every day on IRC, I hear someone complaining about those "damn" Facebook users. That Facebook users don't have a life, that telling people what you had for breakfast isn't that interesting. Fair enough, but what's to stop you from using Facebook to connect to people you find interesting?
Personally, I don't care what people use. It really is all the same. I just tend to want to express myself in ways that seem more like "me".
The author of this client, Lydia Leong, is quite interesting. She's a Research Director at Gartner who has a background in software engineering. Her LJ account was started in 2001, so she must have created it before entering the corporate world -- at least that's my guess.
Which brings me to an interesting thought. As much as my job pushes me towards using Twitter and Facebook professionally, I keep returning to the geekier social media tools -- ones with a lot of history. That means Reddit, IRC, Usenet -- and now LiveJournal.
What's the big deal about that? Just this: as much as modern social networks pay my salary, they don't entirely feel "home" to me. And hey, I'll admit it. Once you use once social media tool, you've used them all. Twitter is just Usenet with a different protocol. But at the end of the day, it's all about the users and how they use it.
Every day on IRC, I hear someone complaining about those "damn" Facebook users. That Facebook users don't have a life, that telling people what you had for breakfast isn't that interesting. Fair enough, but what's to stop you from using Facebook to connect to people you find interesting?
Personally, I don't care what people use. It really is all the same. I just tend to want to express myself in ways that seem more like "me".