Millions of users have enjoyed the services livejournal has provided for over 8 years. Livejournal, to many, kick started the blogging revolution allowing users to publish entries easily, while providing a custom look and a network of friends. It didn’t just kick start blogging, Livejournal defined social networking, and wants to be a major competitor again. According to their website, LiveJournal will be adding features of which made many of the social networks popular.
LiveJournal issued this release on the site: Full release here
We work tirelessly to preserve that atmosphere here on LiveJournal, but we also recognize that we need to remain competitive in an ever-changing market. Today we’re pleased to announce that LiveJournal will be following in the footsteps of other popular websites — many of which you frequent regularly! In fact, we’re so excited that our design and engineering teams have been hard at work to make the changes that you’ve been wanting. We’re starting with the home page, bringing a greater emphasis to both our featured content and our beloved advertisers.
Should myspace, facebook, et al. be worried with this shift in marketing by LiveJournal? Hardly. Im not saying LiveJournal doesn’t command a large market as it is. It has a ton of old school members that are still there everyday, and still post everyday. I am one of those members that has been a part of LiveJournal since 2001. In that time, I have accumulated hundreds of posts, thousands of comments, and dozens of friends in an interconnected social network. With all of that in mind, I don’t think they can compete with the new kids.
In a way, I don’t want them to compete entirely. I have a myspace account, a facebook account, even an old friendster account. I have publicly poo-pooed the community that surrounds these, which justifies my move to Virb. Livejournal still has most of my friends on there, it has a ton of my content, and feels nice and warm. I don’t want the kiddies in the pool during adult swim.
If LiveJournal wants to do this correctly, they will want to have subtle undertones in their social networking ability. Don’t place ads everywhere, make things easy, and they need to continue to support the open source environment Brad Fitzpatrick started when he created LiveJournal. The real key, don’t alienate the current user group.
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Tags: april fools, facebook, livejournal, myspace, virb
Honey, what is today?
I think I have just been pwned. Or whatever the kiddies call it. It didn’t even register with me that today is april fools. I just know they release an update or give site news on the first of every month.
Now I feel like a tard.
It’s easy to fall for April Fool’s jokes on the internet; So long as it’s not as ridiculous as Google’s TiSP!
Actually, I quite like what thinkgeek does on April Fool’s day. I especially like The Vilcus Plug Dactyloadapter. Great stuff.
This year was definitely a good one; When I got the e-mail from them about the Wiihelm I seriously thought it was a new product; It hadn’t occurred to me that it might have been an April Fool’s joke, seeing as though it is thinkgeek and all!
The video was ridiculous though. I had a nice LOL moment when the girl was laying back like she was just so tired and exhausted, and of course the ‘meh’ shirt just topped it off.
Jordan – Does this mean you got an email from the comment I posted in reply to you? If you get an email from this one, please let me know. I just wanted to make sure my new comment plugins are working.
Thanks.
Yeah, I received that e-mail; I actually like it when a site I comment on has this option available, that way I know if there’s been a reply left to a comment. Good plugin to have, it definitely generates repeat visitors.. like me
Thanks for letting me know. I have been working on getting all of my functionality on the site working since I switched hosting providers last week.
And, agreed, this is one of those “must have” plugins. I just visited your site, and found that I use quite a bit of the same plugins that you had listed. I think WordPress should start packaging some of these plugins into their next release.