on communications

[earthnative]

oh neat, there is a LJ chat thingo. Go Jabber. :)

This means LJ has some continuing relevant in my electronic communications, since as previously noted I prefer to no longer broadcast my personal life bluntly via social websites (LJ/Myspace/facebook/etc

Comments

[earthnative]

There are alot of ways to look at it... certainly I like the philosophic aspect of things...

I do wonder how much peoples attitutes to IM and social websites are based around their initial exposures to the online world?

In my own case, it was textforums (BBSs, but not in the traditional dialup sense (wiki for YAWC, then trace lineage back to DOC and Citadel) where I first was social online. These provided "rooms" (not dissimilar to modern webforums), and "X messages" - basically IM. All combined in one. Indeed, one of the first descriptions of LJ to me was that it was like a BBS, but each person runs a room about themselves.

The fun of the BBS though was the 100 or so rooms each on a different topic. I see nothing equivalent today. Webforums are (apart from clumsy interface), far too specialised, and have no chat integrations (this is changing I admit).

Social websites otoh, seem to increasingly cater for the 'broadcast my life' crowd. In all trivial details if possible... all the gossipy badness of IM, with all the permanence and broadcast ability of a website.

I certainly agree that IM can combine some poor aspects of face and written convo - but it adds the real-time element which can overcome some of those issues. (though given some of the heated convos I've had, can enhance the issues badly too :(

Ultimately though, I like both IM and email cos I feel like I'm talking to people deliberately, rather than broadcasting more or less mindlessly. (LJ comments never worked for me, dispite this comment itself :)

I still lurk on ALOT of IRC, but it's pretty quiet these days too...