Livejournals and Blogging, an observation

[womzilla]

At Satuday night dinner during the just-completed (but never-ending) NYRSF Work Weekend, we were discussing the differences between "blogging" and "Livejournaling".

For me, there really isn't one; I very much use LJ as a dirt-simple blogging software package. The only thing I can't do with LJ that I could do with Moveable Type, I said, is check my referrer logs. (There are other minor differences; I can't disemvowel other peoples' comments to my posts, but I mostly don't care.) LJ's community features are decent, but I don't make a lot of use of them beyond the Friends list, which is really just a form of LJ-specific blogroll. One of the other people at the dinner--the one who made the terrific beef stew over brown rice that we were greedily consuming--felt that there was a huge contextual difference between a blogroll and a page with "These People Are My Friends" written all over it, that a "Friends" page has an implict ownership that a blogroll doesn't. I disagree--one can't be held responsible for everything one's friends do--but even if I did, it would still seem like a minor difference to me.

Well, this morning I got a reminder of one other key difference: LJ doesn't host images. The images I put up for my LJ and for the LJs of nellorat and supergee are all stored on my web space at Panix.com, my "home" ISP for my e-mail, Usenet, and Unix shell access. One thing of which I was vaguely aware but hadn't put a lot of attention into is the fact that I have a mere 250 MB of downloads for free from my Panix web server. As far as I know, this has never been an issue. Until this morning, when I got the bill for all of the people who downloaded nellorat's ratine Christmas story.

As nearly as I can tell--I don't keep detailed logs on Panix, either, though I think I could--somewhere between 800 and 1000 people downloaded that page in December. Yow. I hope it brought you much joy!

I've now set my server to limit my total web-based largess to $5 per month. This still lets me supply the world with 10 MB per day, so the first ten people per day who check out the rat story will be fine.

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

"disemvowel"?

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I've made a decision to use them differently. I use LJ for day to day informal stuff about my life. Some of that makes it into the blog as well, but that's mostly politics and current events. I think there's a difference in the formality/friendliness level, but that may be me and the LJs I read. By the way, I use Typepad for my blog and it's REALLY simple. Of course it doesn't give me quite the control I want but there are always trade-offs. It will host pictures too. There's a small charge but I forget just what it is.

MKK

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

It's a punitive technique that tnh pioneered on the comment threads on her blog Making Light (http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight). It consists of rmvng ll h vwls frm n pst if the post is offense. This was so instantly satisfying that you can now get a Moveable Type plug-in to do it automatically.

You can't do that on LJ; you can delete posts in your comment threads, but you can't modify them.

The other thing I would do if I had my own blog set up which you can't do in LJ is set up a comment bulletin board which gatewayed to an NNTP server so that people could read it with a newsreader. I don't like most web-based comment boards, and I don't like any of them as much as I like my newsreader.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

To me there is an immediate, clear and obvious difference between journals and weblogs. A journal contains personal writing, a weblog is a log of one's web surfing finds (generally with one's remarks). LJ can be used as either. Most people do a little weblogging in their journals. The lines of usage are blurred.

I understand that, as more people have flocked to the idea of having an on-line journal, the crowds have mis-taken the meaning of weblog (AKA "blog"). That always happens, but it doesn't make it right.

Also, I really do know that some (most, probably) webloggers reprint the URLs people send them; they aren't out there surfing up all their content their own selves. Who has time?

K.

[mattapp.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you already knew this, but in a couple of the new design templates, one of which I am using, you can actually setup a blogroll in addition to the LJ's "Friends List." It doesn't make up for LJ's other deficiencies, but it is a step in the right direction.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Directions to your blog, please?

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought I'd mentioned it enough that people would know by now. http://marykay.typepad.com/gallimaufry

MKK

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I think I managed to miss bookmarking it, somehow.

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

somewhere between 800 and 1000 people downloaded that page in December. Yow. I hope it brought you much joy!

Oh, it did. I printed it out, stuck it up on the outside of my cubicle, and got tons of comments on it, mostly consternation followed by gooey approval.

Now that I know of your sacrifice, I will file the printouts away carefully, and treasure them forever.