Using LJ

[cos]

One day last year, a friend asked me if I were going to her party that weekend. What party, I asked? It seems she'd posted about it on her LJ, twice. I read her LJ regularly, but had missed both of those posts, and she hadn't sent out email invitations, but was surprised I didn't know about the party.

Another person on my friends list (several, actually) sometimes posts on LJ to call a Dim Sum outing. He just wants some people to come, not any specific individuals, and expects to sometimes be surprised by people he wouldn't have expected to respond. LJ is the perfect tool for that.

People write on LJ for a mostly consistent readership they expect to know, so unlike with most blogs, LJ writers often don't think about newcomers or casual surfers when they write. This can fail, too, because even the people you know haven't been there for every post since the beginning, usually. There are some people on my friendslist who sometimes talk about "BPAL". Presumably, at some point, this abbreviation was defined, but I've never seen it in the year or so since I've seen it being used. On most non-LJ blogs, an abbreviation like that would be explained in each post it's used in, but on LJ, how long do you go before filling your new readers in?

barmaidblog is a well-done hybrid: she writes in LJ style, but with a "typical" blog audience in mind. One of her adaptations for that audience is that every reference to a person or event she expects her readers to be familiar with, is a link the first time it appears in a post. Links lead back to earlier posts so new readers can drill back as far as they need to build up as much context as they want at the time.

( ... and then there's the classic case of "breakup via LJ" - I've seen a few of those ...)

What are some ways people you read use LiveJournal that don't quite work? Or that do work, in LJ-specific and interesting ways?

Comments

[ayalanya.livejournal.com]

for the record, "BPAL" was probably abbreviated before people started posting about it on livejournal. but "black phoenix alchemy lab" isn't going to be terribly helpful either, unless you already know it's a small company that makes non-chemical mostly-hypoallergenic perfume oils.

[cos]

... or unless it's a link :)

[bookishgrrl.livejournal.com]

At first I hyperlinked when talking about BPAL, but to be honest I don't think it should be a big deal. I know when I ran across someone's post referencing an unknown thing called "BPAL" I did what most of my flist would: took the 1.8 seconds necessary to Google it...

...and then became an instant convert, and sent the contents of my wallet to Beth et al. :D

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

One weird way it does work:

Both my roommates became my roommates via LJ (although we knew each other beforehand). The three of us still communicate vital stuff to each other ("My family's coming to visit." "My concert is this weekend." "My grandmother died.") by posting in, and reading, each other's LJs rather than, you know, walking 6 steps down the hallway to each other's rooms, knocking on the door and telling each other.

[cos]

Heh. Yes, an LJ community for a house is a nifty thing, and I've seen a number of them. Do you have a community or is it just posts in each other's LJs?

mzrowan announced a party on her LJ and I saw the post before she mentioned it to me, even though I live in her house, but she was kinda embarrassed about that :) (and it was a fun party)

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

I've discovered that inviting people to things via LJ never, ever, ever works. I don't know why. If I actually want anyone to come I have to send out email.

[ravenword.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the email invite makes people feel more singled out, like, even if I am your LJ friend, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm your real friend who should feel welcome to come to a party that's mentioned in a friends-only post. Unless you specifically tell me personally, by using my email address, that I am invited, I will be less likely to feel welcome.

Similarly, when I post on LJ all "Anyone want to _____ on Saturday?" I rarely get a reply, but if I ask three friends individually they'll probably be up for it.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

For one thing, I use LJ to get advice about things that are happening in my life. I couldn't do this if I were using a more typical blog, for two reasons:

1. usually my "I want advice" posts are friends-only, or even filtered to some subset of my friends, because there are certain people I don't want to know I'm asking whatever question I'm asking. I couldn't do this with a blog. (I could, perhaps, do it by e-mail, but often the subset of my friends I filter to might be thirty to fifty people, which seems too large for e-mail).
2. in a more typical blog, as you say, I wouldn't be able to assume the context that I can assume on LJ.
https://webmail.sas.upenn.edu/horde/imp/message.php?index=649
Social invitations via LJ are tricky because the volume of my friends list is a bit too high; at times when I'm procrastinating I read every post, but there are probably days when I only read ten percent or less of the posts on my friends list and I might miss things that people think are important.

also, breakups and LJ just don't go well together. (I have recent personal experience, as you may have heard.)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

(I could, perhaps, do it by e-mail, but often the subset of my friends I filter to might be thirty to fifty people, which seems too large for e-mail)

Indeed. And the advantage of LJ over email is that people can peruse the comments already left and not repeat advice. Of course with email people can still "reply all" but this forces it into the inbox of all 50 people, wheras with LJ the ~10 people who are actually interested can continue to read follow-up comments and the 40 people who don't have time or useful advice can ignore it after it scrolls off their friendspage.

[tafkats.livejournal.com]

Another downside to posting vital things, party invitations, etc., on LiveJournal: I rarely read people's journals through any other medium than my own friends list, and I find sometimes that I've missed a lot of posts because, for whatever reason, one person's time stamp is several hours earlier than mine and/or most of the other people I read. So I'll read through the friends list until I encounter something I recognize and then stop, but I'll miss somebody's post because even though they wrote it after the last time I checked, the time stamp is earlier so it ends up behind posts I've already read.

[leora.livejournal.com]

That doesn't actually make sense... your friends page is not affected in any way by the timestamp an entry is given. Friends pages are ordered by the time an entry is posted according to LiveJournal's servers, precisely to avoid the problem you describe. The timestamp the entry is assigned is displayed, but it doesn't affect the ordering on your friends page. Personal journals are ordered by the timestamp given, so this would be the case if you went to someone's personal journal and they ordered things out of order.

However, it's possible that your friends are marking the entries as "backdated" or the feature they just renamed to "entry out of order" or whatever it's currently called. That allows someone to post an entry to a personal journal that is given a timestamp earlier than the most recent entry posted that doesn't have that option enabled (I know that concept is hard to follow, and this is one of the most confusing everyday options LJ has, but that is the way it works, and I don't think I can make it clearer without examples) and every option that is marked that way - regardless of its timestamp and regardless of whether the user needed to mark it that way or not to accomplish what they wanted to do or whether they just don't really know how things work will not display on friends pages at all. That's part of what the feature does, it prevents the entry from displaying on any page that orders the entries by actual time posted rather than by timestamp. So, if friends are messing with that, you may be missing their entries because of it.

Otherwise, I'd be more prone to think you're missing it by reading from older to more recent and not refreshing and thus missing entries as new ones come and you click next 20 (or whatever number) and skip some that got pushed back such that they would have appeared on your current skipback. Or that you're missing some due to browser caching. Or you're just plain not noticing some. Or a user might have posted with a higher security level and then edited it so that you could see it, and then it's later in your page and you don't notice it (I do this sometimes as a way to make sure the post is right before I make it visible to the people I want able to see it).

All told, LJ is a great way to stay informed about people's lives in a general sort of way, and a very bad way to ensure that vital information gets to people.

[fidgetmonster.livejournal.com]

the party invite-via-lj thing doesn't work so well, but it's useful in tandem with email. i'd post about a party in LJ as more of an announcement, or to reach a wider audience than people I have email addresses for.

the other way in which LJ 'doesn't work' is through the use of filters: I've seen a lot of "oops, some of you weren't meant to see that" or "that was meant to be private". or worse, complete lack of context about some juicy bit of information because the poster has used their filters inconsistently. if the latter isn't a case of filter misuse, then it could be just random posting, which seems unblog-like. LJ can be a place for venting and brain dumping, or inside jokes. I imagine a blog writer wouldn't want to risk alienating their readership like that.

ways in which LJ IS working: I know a lot more about the daily lives of many of my friends, even the ones i see less than once a year. this gives me warm fuzzies because i know without some easy/popular online medium we'd fall out of touch over time. i've gotten *closer* to people because LJ allowed us to interact more.

[cos]

inconsistent filters: How do you feel about posters making clear to their readers how filtered the post they're reading is, and who's on it? What are circumstances when that's important, vs. when that's just distracting or not useful?

getting closer: Have you ever met anyone new because of LJ? How'd it happen?

[ommango.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you are going to do that panel at Arisia.

[cos]

Yup. But it's the other way 'round: I've had this post ideal milling around in my head since the time that friend asked me if I were coming to her party, and it's the reason I suggested that panel to Arisia. Though I'd written a note to myself after last year's Arisia to ask about LJ panels for this one, so I might've done it anyway, it was that thought that prodded me to do it and that affected the panel suggestions I wrote. Though I suppose knowing that panel is coming up this weekend is what prodded me to finally post this post that I might've posted anytime in the past half-year or so, so I guess it goes both ways.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

...but with a "typical" blog audience in mind. One of her adaptations for that audience is that every reference to a person or event she expects her readers to be familiar with, is a link the first time it appears in a post...

DailyKos is something I think of as a "typical blog" and even they don't do that very often.

[cos]

True. But dailykos is writing in more typical themed-blog style: they expect their readers to be familiar with the general topic (US Democratic-leaning politics and government) but each post is written as a standalone post. They're not doing LJ style blogging, where they update you on new developments in lives you're already following but nobody else is.

barmaidblog is writing LJ-style, so for example she'll mention the guy she's dating by name and refer to something he said that has a lot of meaning for people following her story, but will be enigmatic to others or just whoosh by them. But, she'll make his name a link to her post about their most recent date, so you can follow that and read about it, and in that post, his name might be a link to her post about their first date, etc. And the "something he said" portion might include a link to a post about a related conversation last week, that makes its portent clearer.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Wow, am I the only person in the world who's roughly satisfied with the party-invitation-via-LJ thing? Email seems more thorough and polite, and if it's a *big* party, I'll do that, but for "hey! I'm bored! Come hang out in my backyard!", LJ seems to work just fine.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It works fine for me, too. Usually, I'm posting something like "Hey, it's 4AM, wanna get food?"

I mean, I can see that it wouldn't work so well if you were really concerned about everyone you knew getting the word, but I guess for events like that I simply use some other method in tandem with LJ.

[sadisticseraph.livejournal.com]

breakup via LJ? Finally! Something worse than break up via text message!

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

It was bound to happen.

I think the order goes (from best to worst)
- in person
- by phone
- by letter
- by email
- by text
- by LJ

Not sure if letter is in the right place, though.

[japlady.livejournal.com]

I sort of assume there are folks out there with lives. Some friends are good about reading my last 3 pages of LJ before picking up the phone to give me a call and "catch up" others can't be bothered, to whom I'll say, "well if you only read my LJ"

But invitations? Yes I'll put the general one out there, but I back it up with emails to the folks whose presesce I care most about.

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

Ditto. There's always both.

Break-up by LJ

[yeshivaboy.livejournal.com]

Has this really happened? How? I'm curious...

Re: Break-up by LJ

[cutieperson]

i had it happen years ago. the person i was dating at the time made a post about how he was being pulled in too many directions and something had to go. i knew it wasn't his wife that was going anywhere, which left me...

he had assumed i wouldn't be reading before the next time he was going to see me; let's not get into how WRONG that assumption was. but yeah, it happens.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

What are some ways people you read use LiveJournal that don't quite work?

That's not a very meaningful question. Something "works" if it accomplishes what the writer wanted to accomplish, period; it's not defined by a reader's opinion, not even a little bit. Not every LJ user is writing for a readership; of those who are, they're writing for different audiences. Some are trying to convince, some are trying to express, some are trying to inform (in the simple sense), some are venting, some are seeking feedback.

In general, though...I'd guess that LJ doesn't work as well as a general-purpose blog for people who want to mostly write on a certain subject or theme, develop a readership, and prompt discussion based on their writings. The reason why is that the potential readership isn't going to find it, where a google search will find a non-LJ blog. Play the role of an interested would-be reader: do a google search on yankees baseball blog, or progressive christian blog, or foreign policy blog, or harry potter blog, and you'll find plenty. You won't find them in livejournal, though.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of starting just such a blog, at least initially as an LJ community. And you raise a good point. But I wonder if I customize so that it's titled as a blog, it will show up in searches. It'll depend in part, of course, on whether oters link to it.

[bookishgrrl.livejournal.com]

People write on LJ for a mostly consistent readership they expect to know, so unlike with most blogs, LJ writers often don't think about newcomers or casual surfers when they write. This can fail, too, because even the people you know haven't been there for every post since the beginning, usually.

I'm fuzzy on why this situation is being labelled 'fail'. For example, in my case, no, I *don't* think about newcomers or casual surfers. I don't desire to spread my LJ or draw new readers into it. That's not my LJs purpose. So I don't always write with a concern for spoonfeeding someone context or backstory. If this discourages the casual reader, I *don't* consider it a failure, but a success...

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's what I was talking about: "failure" or "not working" can only be judged in relation to the writer's purpose. You can't call me a failure at writing a sonnet if I'm not trying to write a sonnet...

[safetybitch.livejournal.com]

This is specifically why I have limited my friends list to people who I am in regular contact with anyway... it provides me a way to keep up with their lives when I have time, but I think everyone knows that if they really want my attention they need to call or email. :) Aside from the fact that my free time to read everyone at length keeps getting less and less available. Nursing school is kicking my butt.

And then when I'm really, really procrastinating something as incredibly exciting as the details of what enzymes which cardiac function tests look at and what the expected levels are, I go and read other people's journals too. Go figure. :)

[cos]

You're not the only person I know who does that (limited friends list, just people you are in regular contact with). I'm curious about it, because I keep everyone I know on my friends list, and just keep my reading list down to the ones I read regularly. What would I gain from dropping all the people I don't read regularly off my friends list, I wonder? I know what I gain by keeping them on:
1. Their name is highlighted when I look at other people's userinfo, which sometimes helps me identify people, or find out connections I didn't know about
2. When I do want to procrastinate and read more, it's very convenient - I can keep larger reading filters with more people on them, or read my whole friends list
3. If I post something friends only (which I rarely do), they can see it - unless I have specific reason to limit it to a smaller group, in which case I can post to a filter (which I've done only once so far)