Just gonna leave this here...

[quadruplify]

The demise of a social media platform: Tracking LiveJournal's decline

Once universally praised for founder Brad Fitzpatrick’s open-source platform and commitment to a free userbase—he once vowed that LiveJournal would always have basic (non-paying or ad-supported) accounts—LiveJournal is known these days mostly for being popular in Russia (the Russian name for blogging is “LJ.”) and Singapore, and for housing gossip blog Oh No They Didn’t.

What happened?

I know I already posted this on Twitter and Plurk, but I'm sharing it here too in case you haven't seen it yet -- thanks to mmouse15 for pointing it out. It's a good summary of everything that's gone wrong with LJ over the past five years, and if nothing else, it makes me realize that the people who've abandoned the site are never coming back. Which is sad, because I've always used LJ as a way to keep in touch with people, and I'm too shy/anxious to contact them through other means, especially if we weren't that close. The thought of "reconnecting" with people I've never actually gotten close to to begin with is extremely awkward, and I never know how to go about it. :<

I guess it's just as well that so many people have abandoned LJ, because today embedded videos don't seem to be loading right. Typical, really. =_=

Comments

[thousanth]

Yeah, DW for me these days. Never got into Tumblr for making friends and plurk is only there as a link to some very, very old friends. LJ I only keep to watch communities and the occasional person who just won't leave...!

[quadruplify]

Same here. I always get random people following me on Tumblr, and I'm just like: What am I supposed to do? Is this how friending works on Tumblr? Have people just show up and creep on you until you talk to them? If that's how it works, then no thank you. :P

I'd be more enthusiastic about DW if more people used it, but otherwise I agree with you.