Comments | _elle_: To FB or not?

_elle_

To FB or not?

Jul 25, 2010 08:42

Since it has been a number of years since I was on LJ or even checking it, FB seems to have exploded and taken over. LJ now seems ghost town-ish, while FB is having the longest, loudest party evah.

I don't have a FB account and have been vacillating over the past year on whether to open one or not. The format seems less intimate and limiting (140 ( Read more... )

Comments 13

candid July 25 2010, 16:03:32 UTC

The 140 characters is only a restriction on Twitter. Status updates on Facebook can be longer, and you can write long "Notes" there that are the rough equivalent of LJ posts.

You can always join FB under a pseudonym. Some people do (although not terribly many).

The pros and cons are sort of the same: everyone is on Facebook. I kind of like that, as it's allowed me to reconnect with a lot of people who would never sign up for LJ. The flipside is that the signal to noise is much lower, and unless you filter a lot you end up hearing about what people eat and what they watch on TV, which isn't super-exciting.

My (self-serving) advice is that you should join FB, but that's mostly because I want to hear what you're up to. :)

radiantsun July 27 2010, 00:25:37 UTC

agree

rdmiller3 July 26 2010, 02:59:02 UTC

FB isn't a very good tool for journaling, compared to LJ. It's better for keeping in touch with folks though.

Friending seems like a bigger deal on FB than on LJ. Most people start off by friending lots of relatives, neighbors, co-workers and former classmates with whom they may not have spoken for years. So it's a great way to rekindle political and religious arguments with people who wouldn't normally read your blog. :P

weiskind July 26 2010, 16:02:55 UTC

I'm with lightling--I like seeing the details. I like feeling witnessed in my details too.

Also, as I've been falling in love and oh, so happy, I've been posting to LJ . . . not at all. But I think I may be doing some more posting again. I think it has to do with my feeling of who's listening to me in various spots. More current friends are on FB these days than LJ.

tigresa July 26 2010, 18:55:12 UTC

Ugh, I hate FB. If I ever get on it I end up wasting an hour on there, and without fail whenever I log off again I feel like I haven't learned anything useful or interesting about any of my friends... just what they "like" and think I should "like" too. None of which I have time for in real life.

I like and will continue to use LJ because it is the window into what really matters for those of my friends who still use it. Nothing on FB seems to have any importance whatsoever. It's all fluff and no substance.

I guess it's a 'forest vs. trees' thing. If you can only see one tree at a time, the forest is mostly out of reach. FB is a couple trees at a time, LJ is usually forest AND trees.

Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority on this. Sigh...

_elle_ July 27 2010, 03:47:42 UTC

I totally agree with all your points... thus my hesitancy... Sigh is right sista!

choiceful July 26 2010, 22:25:18 UTC

I prefer livejournal to facebook, and find that I don't really get very interested in facebook entries, but like you say, lj is a ghost town, so I end up checking facebook a little.