(no subject)

[d_aulnoy]

Honest question for those of you on Dreamwidth - is it that much more active than LJ?  Or is this simply a form of social media that's quietly dying off in favor of the brevity of FB and Twitter?  

Comments

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

My flist here is more active than DW, and they seem to get more interaction here than over there. I don't much like the people or politics on DW, so I don't post there much at all. That space appeals more to people with certain interests/focuses, so which platform one uses is likely tied to that.


I have seen some people here moving more to Twitter/FB. Posting there more often than here. Whiich, I suppose, makes sense since it's quicker and easier. I only joined FB to keep up with ICFA folks who weren't over here, so I use the different platforms for different things.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

I crosspost. I generally get more comments on the LJ posts unless I'm writing about a disability centered issue, in which case Dreamwidth specific people show up. About 15 people follow me on both and seem to randomly comment on either blog.

I don't think this form of social media - long, intensive blogging - is dying off, but I do think Livejournal is doing its level best to irritate its customer base, and attempting to turn itself into Facebook with longer blog capacity is not going to help.

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

...or Tumblr. Tumblr seems to have gotten a lot of the LJ runoff.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It's not that things are more active on Dreamwidth, for me at least; it's that it's a better platform for certain kinds of posts. My sense is that there's a lot more happening at LJ, and a lot more people posting here, at any given time, even though LJ itself has lost traffic to the FB/Twitter side of social media.

But for extensive discussions that demand and reward complex arguments, DW is significantly better than LJ. So now, that's where I post anything that I think is likely to be remotely controversial -- if there's going to be any argument over it, the argument is better held in a venue where people can go over 3100 characters in a comment without hitting system limits. And the fact that the capacity is there means that people are used to seeing the long comments, and so the community seems to self-select for those who think that level of engagement is fun, and against those who get the vapors at anything longer than a twitter comment.

(Naturally DW appeals to me; it's the opposite of the twitter model, and outside of its uses for social or political organizing and direct news reporting, I fail to see the appeal of the facebook/twitter model. Is there anything there at all, beyond the purely phatic? Why do people need to be exchanging meaningless chitchat at all times? Do they feel they don't exist unless their tribes are beeping them ever five seconds? -- but anyway. As is so often the case, I digress.)

[justbeast.livejournal.com]

DW is way less active than LJ. Both in terms of users, posting volume, and ESPECIALLY comments.

I've been paying attention to the many of my friends who cross-post to both LJ and DW. And the picture is always the same: for the same post, 0 comments on DW (1 or 2 at /most/), and all the comments are on LJ.

The traffic volume on LJ is diminishing, in favor of FB, Twitter and Tumblr (which I just don't understand, that last one). But for all that, LJ is still unmatched, technologically (and culturally). No other service, at the moment, has the following two thingst: 1) reading filters and writing filters (that last one is INCREDIBLY important, and affects the level of intimacy of the posts), AND 2) threaded comments with email notification.
These two things are key to the culture of LJ, this is what makes it brilliant. DW obviously has those capabilities, but I discount it for the reasons above (relative lack of users and comments).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

It's funny, on my friends that crosspost to DW I am used to seeing a pretty even split of comments-- maybe slightly more on DW. I think it depends on what crowd you follow. I kind of have the feeling that I will eventually move to DW when I have to, I'll just put it off for as long as possible.