Back, Maybe to Visit, Maybe to Stay
This is reposted from Facebook. Since I logged in, I might as well post something. Is anyone listening?
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I was writing the strategic plan for work, and it came up that people get proud of random little things. Like for me, I have a 6 digit Live Journal account number. I'm almost an early adopter on a social media platform that hardly anyone uses anymore. Yay.
I did have to go check my account to see how many digits it was so I could be accurate when referring to it, and I made me realize a great benefit that Live Journal has over other forms of social media. While things you do on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram may forever exist on the Internet to haunt you, they are not usefully persistent. It is very difficult to look back a few years on your Facebook to see the details of your life then. The interface is very poor for it, and even if you can see old posts, you have to slog through shares and memes and such. On Live Journal, I posted stories. On Facebook, what persists is mostly pictures.
It's new. It's now. It's what drives eyeballs and advertising, but I can much better look back and understand myself and my life from 2001 to 2010 than I can from 2010 to now.
I have long felt that something was lost when we went from the long form of Live Journal to the short form of Facebook (and don't get me started on Twitter), but we have traded depth for breadth. My LJ account shows 200 friends, although that may have pruned down. I think it peaked around 400. I believe I'm around 1500 here on Facebook. More networking, not as much connecting.
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I was writing the strategic plan for work, and it came up that people get proud of random little things. Like for me, I have a 6 digit Live Journal account number. I'm almost an early adopter on a social media platform that hardly anyone uses anymore. Yay.
I did have to go check my account to see how many digits it was so I could be accurate when referring to it, and I made me realize a great benefit that Live Journal has over other forms of social media. While things you do on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram may forever exist on the Internet to haunt you, they are not usefully persistent. It is very difficult to look back a few years on your Facebook to see the details of your life then. The interface is very poor for it, and even if you can see old posts, you have to slog through shares and memes and such. On Live Journal, I posted stories. On Facebook, what persists is mostly pictures.
It's new. It's now. It's what drives eyeballs and advertising, but I can much better look back and understand myself and my life from 2001 to 2010 than I can from 2010 to now.
I have long felt that something was lost when we went from the long form of Live Journal to the short form of Facebook (and don't get me started on Twitter), but we have traded depth for breadth. My LJ account shows 200 friends, although that may have pruned down. I think it peaked around 400. I believe I'm around 1500 here on Facebook. More networking, not as much connecting.