LJ hates us again, but what's new
As I said in my comment to the news post, "must be Tuesday." Basically they are trying to connect livejournal with facebook and twitter. NOT ON. This means that, if someone sets it up, their comment to a friends-locked entry will appear on facebook or twitter - the f-locked post itself won't be visible, of course, but if you are friends with someone on LJ and facebook, and they are friends with people that you don't want to know about your livejournal, then that friend has effectively outed you, without even meaning to, b/c when it comes to the internet, people don't think a whole lot. This comment explains it a bit better than I did. (And even though I am lolling at some of the examples, it is pretty serious.)
The problem with livejournal (among many other things) is that the people that work there don't seem to realize that the people their service use it very differently than they think they do, or than the LJ people do, maybe. Anyone that's been on these sites knows that twitter and facebook were started initially with the idea that you use your real name. So a lot of people do; these are basically people's public profiles, and as such often connect to family, local friends, and maybe even former or current bosses and/or coworkers. Livejournal is not like that - from the beginning, you had a username of some random thing of your choosing. This pseudonymity is part of what draws so many fandomers, and so many women, to livejournal, compared to the rest of the internet. (I have read a couple things on this.) It is why I am able to laugh at this trope so much, b/c my experience from the beginning of my internet days (even a bit before livejournal!) has pretty much been the opposite: assumed female unless told otherwise.
With all the changes livejournal is implementing, I can tell what they're trying to do: they're trying to become more like a mainstream blogging site, like blogspot or something. With the implementation of pingbacks and now this connecting to facebook and twitter. However, that's not what their users want, or how their users are using the site. It's easy to see why: the f-locked entries and friends lists, and various degrees of privacy settings. People came here because they wanted to use livejournal like a JOURNAL not a BLOG. That right there is basically a key difference between them.
This is why so many fandomers came here - they could read and write fanfiction without anyone in real life knowing what they wrote or read (well, unless they told them specifically, or had a backstabbing friend, or some bad luck.) Now this pseudo-privacy has a huge likelihood to be compromised. It seems like for awhile Livejournal is trying their best to remove themselves from their fannish association, b/c it would "tarnish" their reputation. Since this is a good portion of their userbase, it's showing even more they don't care about their users at all.
So, Dear Livejournal:
Livejournal is not Blogspot. It never will be, no matter how much you try, and the more you try, the more it will drive users away, b/c they don't want it to be.
The problem with livejournal (among many other things) is that the people that work there don't seem to realize that the people their service use it very differently than they think they do, or than the LJ people do, maybe. Anyone that's been on these sites knows that twitter and facebook were started initially with the idea that you use your real name. So a lot of people do; these are basically people's public profiles, and as such often connect to family, local friends, and maybe even former or current bosses and/or coworkers. Livejournal is not like that - from the beginning, you had a username of some random thing of your choosing. This pseudonymity is part of what draws so many fandomers, and so many women, to livejournal, compared to the rest of the internet. (I have read a couple things on this.) It is why I am able to laugh at this trope so much, b/c my experience from the beginning of my internet days (even a bit before livejournal!) has pretty much been the opposite: assumed female unless told otherwise.
With all the changes livejournal is implementing, I can tell what they're trying to do: they're trying to become more like a mainstream blogging site, like blogspot or something. With the implementation of pingbacks and now this connecting to facebook and twitter. However, that's not what their users want, or how their users are using the site. It's easy to see why: the f-locked entries and friends lists, and various degrees of privacy settings. People came here because they wanted to use livejournal like a JOURNAL not a BLOG. That right there is basically a key difference between them.
This is why so many fandomers came here - they could read and write fanfiction without anyone in real life knowing what they wrote or read (well, unless they told them specifically, or had a backstabbing friend, or some bad luck.) Now this pseudo-privacy has a huge likelihood to be compromised. It seems like for awhile Livejournal is trying their best to remove themselves from their fannish association, b/c it would "tarnish" their reputation. Since this is a good portion of their userbase, it's showing even more they don't care about their users at all.
So, Dear Livejournal:
Livejournal is not Blogspot. It never will be, no matter how much you try, and the more you try, the more it will drive users away, b/c they don't want it to be.