LiveJournal vs Facebook, a personal perspective

[stephbg]

I like lj, it suits me a lot, and I've spent a lot of time here the last few months. My Facebook account is a very new acquisition, but I've already formed some impressions, and found them two very different places.



LiveJournal
For me, lj combines some of the best parts of attending a party with friends, with many of the disadvantages cut out. The best bits are the opportunities to have conversations with a lot of interesting people on a wide variety of topics. LJ has the advantage in that it is possible to pick up and join a conversation long after it has started, and you have an opportunity to edit your words before speaking/posting. Not to imply that I've never posted something stupid, but at least there's a chance to save yourself.

The big advantage lj has for me is that it removes all the noise of the other conversations, the music, the shuffling and the general environmental noise that makes listening to voices in a crowd so difficult for me. Concentration on one conversation becomes effortless, rather than the horrible strain it can be.

A point I forgot to include in my original post, and which is very important, is that one can begin an interesting conversation without having to first attract the attention of people willing to listen to you. Although I have developed the habit of addressing my mythical readership (hi readership) I'm actually talking to my future self. I find there's an enormous difference between (a) muttering to myself and (b) writing and then re-reading one's thoughts forced into some vaguely coherent form.

Facebook
I like conversation, but have an allergy to smalltalk. I have never been a fan of IM or SMS chat. I particuarly dislike the impression of being surrounded by a storm of chitchat from many different people. I don't play online games. I do not enjoy creating online profiles. I am not looking for new social contacts based on a mutual favourite colour.

All of which appear to disqualify me from ever enjoying Facebook.

I think it also suffers from an unfortunate resemblance to orkut. I allowed myself to become keen on orkut, filled out a detailed profile, linked to as many friends as I could identify and then... *sound of crickets*. A lot of effort and excitement, followed by a thin but irritatingly constant trickle of bogus friend requests from Indian males and sundry genitally-fixated individuals. The irritation factor came from being forced to remember a login and password purely for the purposes of blatting people away.

Old, slow and proud of it
I shall persist with Facebook, for it has brought me back in to touch with a few people I'd lost over the years, but I much prefer the quality of contact from lj, and the joy of the rambly blog. That said I may yet develop an unfortunate addiction to Scrabulous.



EDIT: I've added more reasons to like lj.
EDIT2: FB now refuses to display a picture of my most photogenic cat. They are dooming themselves.

Comments

[cnotte.livejournal.com]

I loved your comparison. I'm not keen on facebook or myspace.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I've added to it since you commented. On the subject of social networking, do you mind if I ask how you came to be reading my lj? Happy to have you, just curious.

[cnotte.livejournal.com]

I like going back and reading old entries to see how much I have evolved.

You are my random search for the day. As part of an experiment I comment randomly on one lj a day to gage the response. So far its about 50/50 with a lot of people becoming good friends.

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

In my limited experience, it's a process that has lead to some terrific friendships!

[cnotte.livejournal.com]

well then maybe we should be friends :)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

An interesting experiment with a much better success rate than approaching strangers in public places :-)

It was my pleasure to be your random search for the day.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

If you already have and LJ account and enjoy it, then catching up with people you haven't seen for years pretty much is the point of facebook. Its much more superficial than LJ (but a lot of people like that, so at least you can get in contact with them).

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

Just to show how the zeitgeist operates, here's the post immediately before yours in my friends page.

As I see it, effbee has value as a way to locate people, and almost nothing else. I like the idea of ambient intimacy, but find effbee's stream of irrelevancies largely useless—other than to save me the time of trawling other people's contact lists. I loathe the uneditability of messages (what, you mean I can only delete the entire thread?!), the lack of markup, and the fact that the fucking thing can unrecoverably time your session out when you're in the middle of a long, complex reply. (In fact, I almost stopped using it entirely when that happened; I was absolutely gutted.) And no, everyone, I do not want to play Werewolf Cocktail Movie Quiz with you. Get a life!!1!

It has value in that it's teaching noobs a little of what social networks can do, so they'll appreciate a better one when they find it. Other than that, it's a scary profiling device for the evil empire and friends that probably won't be around in five years. (And sadly for all its fans, Hasbro is likely to kill off Scrabulous soon.)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Cool, I'm part of the zeitgeist. I feel all warm and fuzzy and belonging.

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

As I way saying to strangedave last night, and as I ranted a while back, I think we're all essentially indwellings of our culture: the zeitgeist in flesh. Of course, we're not passive puppets, so our genetics and our individual experience strongly influence how we manifest the spirit of the times; but in the absence of this near-immortal memetic operating system, we're little more than chemical machines.

[huckle.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of joining myspace because the cool kids at work all have an account. Now I don't think so. I am a part of the zeitgeist! woot - I certainly don't feel like one. Perhaps thats the genetics speaking- I come from a conservative farming history.
I presume that you do not think that there is a ghost in the machine?

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

I presume that you do not think that there is a ghost in the machine?

Oh, but I do. I became a dualist a good 15 years ago now (iirc). I just believe the "ghost" is memetic, not ectoplasmic.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Much as I would like to protest "I am an individual" I am clearly a product of my social contacts. I think the UniSFA old guard who've known each other and have kept in contact for ~20 years are a particularly interesting group: interested in both the implications of history and the possibilities of the future, and with the brains and communication skills to keep ideas alive and breathing.

However, I'd still like to think I am more than a clever collection of mobile plumbing.

PS The more I use FB the more it sucks. Vote 1 Zeitgeist. Please direct your preferences to The Greens.

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

Well said. I don't have a facebook account and the more I hear about it the happier I am for that to be the case.

[wolflullaby.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree with a lot of that. I have had an LJ for a long time now, and I like that it really is like a public journal of your thoughts and whatnot. I can keep in touch with real life friends who I don't get to see enough of, and it keeps me in touch with what they are up to, and helps me to get to know people better, by seeing their thoughts that may not come up in everyday conversation.

I have gotten all excited about Facebook. I've caught up with about 50 people from school, who I had assumed that I would never ever see or hear from again, and I love that. But I would definitely develop relationships with these people (if I choose to) away from Facebook. Conversation seems a bit too public, and I'd rather get to know them again through email or GTalk or whatnot. I have gotten into all the apps and colourful play, but I figure that will die down pretty darn quick, and I'll return to my reliable LJ once more, where I'll talk to the people in my life whom I love dearly, and get to know them better and better. ^___^