friending binge

[cos]

Last June, near the beginning of the roadtrip, I reached LiveJournal's 750 friend limit. I had to start removing LJ's to friend new ones. Every few months I'd remove a bunch, and add a bunch I'd been waiting to add, and be at 750 again. But earlier this month, LiveJournal changed the limit to 2,000 (or 1,000 for unpaid accounts). Yay!

For the past couple of weeks I've been on a friending binge, adding a few new LJs every few days from my list of people I wanted to add but hadn't gotten around to making space for yet. Now at 763, but I'm not quite done yet...

P.S. I've been using LJ's classic "Dystopia" style ever since I recoiled with loathing at their first redesign in 2003, but I just switched to their newest style, Vertigo, and I really like it. Try it.

Comments

[cos]

Why would you assume I read all of them? :) (I don't, most of the time)

[feuervogel]

So, er, what's the point?

[cos]

Is that a serious question?
(that is, do you think the only purpose of friending someone is to always keep up on all their posts?)

There are a bunch of points:

Sometimes, when I'm procrastinating, I do actually read my whole friends page. Not very often, so it's not a matter of finding the time to keep up on all, but it does mean that any post someone on my friendslist posts might be one I see.

It's very easy and convenient for me to change which reading filters each person is on - as long as they're on my friendslist. If someone is a friend, I can shift them in and out of the groups I read more or less often. It's much easier for me, and much less annoying from them, than repeatedly friending and refriending them.

When I post friendsonly, which I don't do often but have done on a few occasions, everyone I friend can see it. When I post friendsonly, I don't want to prevent anyone I know from seeing the post, so keeping them all on my friendslist serves that purpose.

People I have friended show up in bold on userinfo pages I look at. That makes it easier for me to spot the people I know at a glance when looking at someone else's userinfo - to help me identify a new person, or connections between people I know.

It also probably would help other people looking at my userinfo, in similar ways, except that LJ doesn't show friends on your userinfo if you have over 500, so only my friends-of serves that purpose. Lame, IMO. I've put in a suggestion for LJ to fix that, which people liked and which LJ moved to implementation consideration, so maybe someday they will fix it.

[feuervogel]

Yes, it was a serious question. Yes, the main reason I friend people (non-communities) is to keep up with their posts because I a) know them and care about their doings or b) think they're interesting people and want to see what they're up to. (like the 2 authors I'm journalstalking, for example.)

I don't consider LJ a popularity contest, and I'm not interested in Xtreme Social Networking. So, no, adding a gazillion friends Just Because makes no sense to me at all.

[cos]

Ahh. Well, as you can see, it's not Just Because. It has a bunch of useful purposes for me.

(And like I said, I do change who is on which of my reading filters fairly frequently)

[feuervogel]

Fair enough. I don't find your purposes particularly useful on a personal basis, so it's still not a particularly compelling strategy for me. But if it works for you, great.