a rant

[charmian]

I'm getting rather annoyed with how on the suggestions comm people are always like "Facebook does this, so LJ shouldn't." Obviously, just because Facebook does something doesn't mean that LJ should either. Even if you don't personally like Facebook/Facebook doesn't meet your needs, it does meet the needs of a lot of people, which argues that yes, maybe it HAS implemented features which are genuinely valuable to its users.


Now, some things are annoying about Facebook and indeed, some of the things it does won't fit in well with LJ. But, if you think so, then you should explain the reasons why. It also annoys me when people don't realize a feature also exists on things which are not Facebook.

Anyway, LJ has two biiiiig advantages over Facebook: 1) you can be anonymous and 2) you can blog. Facebook has notes, but they suck. These are things LJ has that Facebook does not, and differentiate it in a positive way (okay, in some ways 1) is a negative, depending on who you are and what your needs are). I think if we could both blog on Facebook and be anonymous, a lot of people would not be using LJ anymore.

Another thing that frustrates me about Suggestions: People argue because THEY don't need a feature, it shouldn't be implemented.

And yet another thing: I think there are too many different ways that people use LJ for people to be so cavalier about saying "I don't want LJ to be a place where people do such and such," where such and such is not something harmful, or that infringes on other users.


BTW, agree or disagree: "If we could both blog on Facebook and be anonymous (er, pseudonymous), a lot of people would not be using LJ anymore."

Comments

[morineko]

Agree. There are so many things on Facebook that you have to be a registered user for and at this time I refuse to use the service.

[charmian]

Yeah. If you want to like talk to people you know IRL and plan things with them, or watch them and see their photos, it works well.

So I wonder if eventually a rival service (like say, Buddypress) which provides social networking features combined with the possibility of anonymity and blogging might make an impact.

[elena]

I once had an stalker, so I'm extremely reticent to post information that can be used to identify me on the internets. My FB account is limited to relatives and as protected as I have been able to manage, fullstop. I don't even have a picture of myself in my profile.

It's a pity, because there are lots of co-workers on FB, but I'm not going to mix them with my family. Fandom participation in FB is right out.

[charmian]

Yeah, I really do not want to participate in fandom under my IRL identity.

So then, though, IF facebook or a FB-like service DID allow you to post under a nonIRL identity, would you use it to participate in fandom based on its features as a software?

[elena]

Possibly, although I'm not sure that the format is conductive to any meaningful discussion anyway. That's why I'm not just creating a different FB account under a pseudonym.

There have been a few debacles lately (like the discovery that a Dutch artist, Mijn Schatje, has been tracing company and owner photos of ball-jointed dolls, see here) in which I'd have liked to follow the FB side more closely, but I'm lazy.

[charmian]

Oh yeah, but often there's not much meaningful discussion in fandom either, so for the non-meaningful discussion parts, though.

[torachan]

If we could both blog on Facebook and be anonymous (er, pseudonymous), a lot of people would not be using LJ anymore.

Hmm, I don't know. What would be the big benefit to switching altogether? Are FB-style quizzes that popular that people would switch just for that?

Personally I don't like the layout of FB. I wouldn't want to read a bunch of blog posts in that narrow column. I also don't like that there's not threaded comments and there's no way to tell if anyone replies back to you but to go back and check the entry.

I think a lot of people would be really happy if LJ/DW added the sort of quiz functions that FB has. I don't understand it, but they seem really popular. I have 30-40 people friended on FB and the quizzes far outweigh any other content (probably 80-90% quizzes).

If such a feature were implemented on LJ/DW, I would love it if they were separate from regular posts. Like, because they would be posted automatically after taking one, the system would be able to recognise them as a quiz post, and in your settings you could say "do not show quiz posts on my flist". So that way people on your flist could take quizzes to their heart's content and you wouldn't have to be spammed with them. (Or if not that, at least they would come with an automatic cut tag, and the cut tag would specify that they are a quiz (maybe have the name of the quiz in it).)

[charmian]

Oh, because Facebook is bigger; that alone is quite an advantage. If you could have more than one identity there, since you use it for IRL stuff, you could simply just switch your logout to do fandom stuff. Also there are groups, and the "what am I doing now" feature, as well as inviting people to events and "becoming a fan of," as well as apps and such.

So yeah, I don't think it's really solely about the quizzes and such (the appeal of facebook)

[torachan]

Oh, right. I don't understand the appeal of those, either, so I tend to forget about them. Groups/fans just seems like a more complicated version of LJ user interests.

[charmian]

Well, groups seem to have the ability to act as a message board, so they seem more like a comm. As for becoming a fan, though, that seems to be somewhat different in that it's broadcast to everyone.

[torachan]

Right. Groups do have the ability to do some things, but I don't think that's what most people use them for. When people join groups like "I hate people who don't use apostrophes correctly", they are just doing so to declare it on their profile, really.

And yeah, that's what I meant by more complicated. To be honest, I really (really) don't need to get spammed with every new thing or person people on my flist decide they like. I'm not that interested. (Same with quizzes. I lack that gene that makes me desperately curious what kind of animal you are or what your fake Japanese name is or who you would be as a Simpsons character. :p)

[charmian]

Huh...I've joined some groups which ARE used for networking purposes, though. It does seem that there is serious stuff going on Facebook as well (political organizing, business, formation of groups which do things), although I'm not a part of that.

Hmm... The people I know on Facebook don't do that as much. I use it mainly to read their updates and to organize events.

[petronia]

I (and most people I know, I think) only use Facebook groups for actual real life organization purposes: student club committee, bridal shower organizers, knitting circles, and so on. But they get a lot of mileage out of that.

"Fans" pages are basically a way for companies to be able to sponsor/broadcast to users directly, in an opt-in style.

[ex_tongari766]

agree, in fact I would just need the blogging feature and the usual suspects to blog about fandom on FB as Tongari. but not on my RL account, people think I am crazy enough as it is

[charmian]

Usual suspects=? People on your flist?

[ex_tongari766]

yup, people I have met through LJ with similar interests. I get creeped out when strangers add me on FB but not so much on LJ, I don't know why.. I guess I associate 'friends on FB' with 'friends in RL' and that's a whole other implication altogether. it is purely psychological I think? I feel more in touch with some LJ friends than some RL acquaintances, for example people from school in other classes, with whom I never exchanged more than passing social niceties.

actually come to think of it I have added a few LJ friends to my FB account after all. but we rarely interact on FB lol

[charmian]

Yeah, I pretty much have been keeping my FB totally separate from LJ, because IRL I don't really run into many people who are interested in anime/manga fandom in the way I am.

[lennan]

Hmmm, blogging or otherwise, I'm not sure I would switch from LJ to facebook, since really I use facebook solely for people I know in person and maybe at most three people I've only spoken to online, but these are either people who came to me through a friend I know personally, or because I've had online contact with them for years. And I'm not sure I would want to create two separate accounts one for my pseudonym and one for my real name. I already have enough problems with keeping track of what I do have on LJ and DW. The only thing that makes it easy for me on DW is that I still use the blog here to cross post on LJ.

Add to that, I'm really bad at using FB to being with, mostly for wall posting on long distance friends...any sort of organization happens through email, so there would be little difference to me.

[franzeska]

Hmm... I'm signed up for just about every site in existence and all under my real name, so I'm not especially bothered by the idea of RL and fandom mixing. That said, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate the way FB looks. Something about the layout just confuses me. It just looks like a chaotic mess to me and I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be looking at or doing. (It's probably obvious that I never log in to FB aside from when I'm responding to invitations.)

I think the multiple logins for one site thing would mainly just let more people accidentally post fandom things under their real names, but I suspect people who use FB a lot would like it. After all, it's rather confusing and tiresome to keep track of gazillions of different social networking sites.

Still, the only features I really require are threaded comments with notifications and a high proportion of people I know in fandom or who I'd like to know. As long as FB doesn't provide the former, I'll never start using it more, and while it has a massive number of users, fandom types (at least in some fandoms) are present in large numbers elsewhere.

I think I'd also be more amenable to switching to something with bad blogging features and too many quizzes if I weren't trying to read fic on the same site I was blogging/networking on. (Though, really, that problem would be better solved by people using archives instead of LJ, rather than by keeping quizzes off of blogging sites.)

[charmian]

Hmm, it doesn't really bother me, but I don't use it for anything but leaving messages for people and responding to invitations.

True, but IIRC a few people use LJ for that now? (Having an IRL account and a fandom account).

Hmm, lack of threaded comments doesn't bother me that much, because nowadays I don't have many people responding to my posts anyhow. Are there people doing fandom things on FB anyway, though?

Yeah, it would make more sense to use dedicated archiving software for archiving purposes. However, I don't read fanfic much anymore, so that wouldn't be a problem for me personally, but I do read blogs/reviews, and having bad software for that would annoy me.