Dreamwidth
You may have heard a lot of people talking about Dreamwidth recently. So what is it and why should you care?
Dreamwidth is an LJ fork. This is not the same as an LJ clone. Clone sites take the LJ code, put it on their own servers and run it; these are the IJs, GJs, JFs of this world. They don't do any active development. I have never had an LJ-clone account anywhere else, LJ may have done some very silly things over the years but I've never felt like jumping ship to something inferior, something that is a cheap knock-off of LJ itself.
Dreamwidth is different; the people involved have taken the LJ code and they're developing, they're developing a LOT. They're making it better. There are so many reasons why Dreamwidth is awesome, the concept and the people and the atmosphere they are creating. So I'm going to try and tell you why.
* Denise and Mark are AWESOME and they know what they're doing.
The Dreamwidth project is spearheaded by two ex-LJ employees. They both worked with LJ for years, they know what they're doing. What's more, they're very active LJ users themselves. There is a vast team of enthusiastic volunteers helping them out - a great many of these people are ex-LJ staff or are long-time LJ volunteers, so they know what they're doing too. All of the devs are very active LJ users - a great many are involved in one fandom or another, many RPG. They use LJ like I use LJ, like a whole damn lot of us use LJ. They're going to use DW like I use DW. They're not going to screw us over here because they'll be screwing themselves over in the process.
But this is not a project undertaken lightly by people who want a happy internet home with no concept of what it means to run something like this. These are people who also understand the business side of things - don't believe me? Just take a look at this. These people know what they're doing. They understand how people use their journals and why, how they interact with their friends and the wider community. And they understand how to make it a sustainable project with a future. I trust them.
* Whee! Development!
There is a hell of a lot of active development going on right now, and they have many more plans for the future. The biggest thing is the removal of the "friends" concept and the splitting of the friends list. The term friend makes everything sticky and somewhat muddies what's actually happening when you friend someone. On Dreamwidth, subscribing to someone's journal to read their updates is a different beast to giving them access to your journal. Similarly, they may subscribe to your journal without granting you access to theirs. The word friend is nowhere in sight. I LOVE IT. This isn't all that they're doing though - they're getting rid of some of the crap that LJ has added over the past few years, improving the way that existing features work and adding shiny new features too.
* Whee! Importing! Crossposting!
Another thing they've been working hard on is journal importing - not only do the journal entries move, so too do the comments, icons etc. Comment importing is a tricky issue because if you leave a comment in my journal, it moves with my journal but it's your comment so you should still have access to it and be able to delete it if you wish to. The way they've solved this problem is by linking OpenID accounts for everyone who has commented on an imported journal - so your comment is still yours. OpenID also lets you comment on DW as LJ-you, it's incredibly easy to use. And you don't need to do anything fancy or complicated to get one. If you have an LJ you automatically have an OpenID, job done.
Another shiny thing they've been working on is crossposting to different journals, so that any post, say made on Dreamwidth will also be posted to LJ - I intend to make full use of this.
* Enthusiam
Everyone involved in this project is so enthusiastic and so excited about it! That in itself is telling. If you don't believe what I have to say, why not ask them: Why Dreamwidth?
A lot of thought and a lot of love has gone into this project and it shows. Everything has been carefully thought through: for example, the menus on the main site pages have been restructured following a large amount of testing and feedback. I always have to click through every sodding LJ menu to find the function of feature I'm looking for, not so with DW, the layout makes sense.
* Dreamwidth is for everyone
And if none of this has convinced you that this might just be something good, check out their guiding principles and diversity statement ♥
Okay, you're thinking, this all sounds great, can I get one? This is a great post that explains how you can get one. But in short, no, not yet, not really (unless you want to get involved with dev work - there's loads to do and everyone is incredibly helpful so it doesn't matter if you have bags of experience doing this stuff or none - I have very little but I'm giving it a go!) Right now, Dreamwidth is in closed beta; Denise is giving out the odd invite code here and there (she enjoys taunting twitter) but mostly the accounts in use right now are for beta testers. This will soon change.
On April 30th, Dreamwith opens for open beta, this is explained fully in this post. On April 30th, Dreamwidth will open to the public.
So I will be moving to Dreamwidth (indeed, I already have: laitaine) and I'm so excited I can't begin to describe it. I am in love with it already. So much. This does not mean that I will be abandoning my LJ, I have a lot of friends here and I am not foolish enough to expect that everyone will up sticks here and go to Dreamwidth just because I am. I've also got a permanent account here (that hasn't really paid for itself yet) so I'll still be around. But I will also be playing in the Dreamwidth sandbox :) ♥
Dreamwidth is an LJ fork. This is not the same as an LJ clone. Clone sites take the LJ code, put it on their own servers and run it; these are the IJs, GJs, JFs of this world. They don't do any active development. I have never had an LJ-clone account anywhere else, LJ may have done some very silly things over the years but I've never felt like jumping ship to something inferior, something that is a cheap knock-off of LJ itself.
Dreamwidth is different; the people involved have taken the LJ code and they're developing, they're developing a LOT. They're making it better. There are so many reasons why Dreamwidth is awesome, the concept and the people and the atmosphere they are creating. So I'm going to try and tell you why.
* Denise and Mark are AWESOME and they know what they're doing.
The Dreamwidth project is spearheaded by two ex-LJ employees. They both worked with LJ for years, they know what they're doing. What's more, they're very active LJ users themselves. There is a vast team of enthusiastic volunteers helping them out - a great many of these people are ex-LJ staff or are long-time LJ volunteers, so they know what they're doing too. All of the devs are very active LJ users - a great many are involved in one fandom or another, many RPG. They use LJ like I use LJ, like a whole damn lot of us use LJ. They're going to use DW like I use DW. They're not going to screw us over here because they'll be screwing themselves over in the process.
But this is not a project undertaken lightly by people who want a happy internet home with no concept of what it means to run something like this. These are people who also understand the business side of things - don't believe me? Just take a look at this. These people know what they're doing. They understand how people use their journals and why, how they interact with their friends and the wider community. And they understand how to make it a sustainable project with a future. I trust them.
* Whee! Development!
There is a hell of a lot of active development going on right now, and they have many more plans for the future. The biggest thing is the removal of the "friends" concept and the splitting of the friends list. The term friend makes everything sticky and somewhat muddies what's actually happening when you friend someone. On Dreamwidth, subscribing to someone's journal to read their updates is a different beast to giving them access to your journal. Similarly, they may subscribe to your journal without granting you access to theirs. The word friend is nowhere in sight. I LOVE IT. This isn't all that they're doing though - they're getting rid of some of the crap that LJ has added over the past few years, improving the way that existing features work and adding shiny new features too.
* Whee! Importing! Crossposting!
Another thing they've been working hard on is journal importing - not only do the journal entries move, so too do the comments, icons etc. Comment importing is a tricky issue because if you leave a comment in my journal, it moves with my journal but it's your comment so you should still have access to it and be able to delete it if you wish to. The way they've solved this problem is by linking OpenID accounts for everyone who has commented on an imported journal - so your comment is still yours. OpenID also lets you comment on DW as LJ-you, it's incredibly easy to use. And you don't need to do anything fancy or complicated to get one. If you have an LJ you automatically have an OpenID, job done.
Another shiny thing they've been working on is crossposting to different journals, so that any post, say made on Dreamwidth will also be posted to LJ - I intend to make full use of this.
* Enthusiam
Everyone involved in this project is so enthusiastic and so excited about it! That in itself is telling. If you don't believe what I have to say, why not ask them: Why Dreamwidth?
A lot of thought and a lot of love has gone into this project and it shows. Everything has been carefully thought through: for example, the menus on the main site pages have been restructured following a large amount of testing and feedback. I always have to click through every sodding LJ menu to find the function of feature I'm looking for, not so with DW, the layout makes sense.
* Dreamwidth is for everyone
And if none of this has convinced you that this might just be something good, check out their guiding principles and diversity statement ♥
Okay, you're thinking, this all sounds great, can I get one? This is a great post that explains how you can get one. But in short, no, not yet, not really (unless you want to get involved with dev work - there's loads to do and everyone is incredibly helpful so it doesn't matter if you have bags of experience doing this stuff or none - I have very little but I'm giving it a go!) Right now, Dreamwidth is in closed beta; Denise is giving out the odd invite code here and there (she enjoys taunting twitter) but mostly the accounts in use right now are for beta testers. This will soon change.
On April 30th, Dreamwith opens for open beta, this is explained fully in this post. On April 30th, Dreamwidth will open to the public.
So I will be moving to Dreamwidth (indeed, I already have: laitaine) and I'm so excited I can't begin to describe it. I am in love with it already. So much. This does not mean that I will be abandoning my LJ, I have a lot of friends here and I am not foolish enough to expect that everyone will up sticks here and go to Dreamwidth just because I am. I've also got a permanent account here (that hasn't really paid for itself yet) so I'll still be around. But I will also be playing in the Dreamwidth sandbox :) ♥