And you’re absolutely right with that! Some people love it, and the only way to find out is to try.
I love it. Seriously. I had one for about two years before I decided that I needed WAY more user pictures (although I’ve only uploaded about 70) and the ability to phone post. Also, I have friends around the world who post on LJ, so it’s a fast, consolidated way of keeping in touch with everyone.
I like it. I live in California now, but all of my friends live back east. I post about day to day stuff that they would find interesting, but that aren’t worthy of phone calls or emails. I can also vent about my life to no one in particular, leave messages that won’t get lost by roommates and pontificate without annoying anyone.
I have, however, seen an extremely amusing blow out about politics that led to this girl cutting off all ties with my group of friends. I never liked her anyway, so I just laughed.
Another huge fan. I heard about Livejournal through the SDMB about 5 years ago.
I signed up, and just posted my mundane daily affairs or whatever. 5 years later, I’m doing the same thing, but my group of friends has grown considerably. Most are former members of the SDMB, some are friends made through common interests listed on LJ, some are long distance family members. It’s a great way to keep in contact with people.
I agree totally with what TroyMcClure said, it is what you make of it.
Well, most do. To pull some examples from a friend’s info, guy-on-guy is a link, but guy-on-guy-on-guy isn’t. If you list anything too odd, it’ll show up in regular text.
I have to say that it’s a great tool for keeping in touch. It gives me a place to rant to my friends, read about their lives, and I’ve also used it to pass notes before. (Phone? Why would I use the phone? I have my LJ)
You won’t get many random people commenting to your LJ should you decided to keep one–I can count the number of times that’s happened to me on one hand. If nothing else, signing up will allow you to create a friend’s list of the journals you want to follow, so you can read them all in one place.
As afr as I can tell, if there’s anyone (or any community) else with a given interest listed, it will be a link. If you’re the only one, it’s not.
That is accurate.
Aesiron, if you have a problem with another poster, you need to take it to the Pit. Don’t take swipes like this inside MPSIMS again.
That’s right, but here’s some advice: Don’t make it a point to come up with interesting and original interests that will be unlinked and demonstrate how clever you are, because at some point some bastard will stumble across your info page, see how original and interesting your unlinked interests are, and then STEAL THEM AND MAKE THEM ALL LINKS ON YOUR USERINFO.
That son of a bitch.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Oh, and I don’t think anybody has linked yet to the SDMB Livejournal Community. It’s not incredibly active, but it’s a good start if you’re looking to friend some people from the board.
The list of unusual interests is so 2004. Now the thing is to put a list of unsual nonsequturial tags after each entry.
I’m not even clear on what the tags are for, exactly. Is it like the memories feature?
I like LJ. There are some assholes on the site, for sure. There’s definitely something about the place that inspires some people to act like 7th graders, but I just stay away from them. It gives me a place to expound on whatever I’m thinking about and it helps me keep in touch with friends (which is great for me because I suck at regular correspondence). Most of my friends list is composed to Dopers and it’s been great to get to know them better, especially people whose posts I enjoyed or liked at a brief meeting at a Dopefest.
I love my LiveJournal- it gives me entertainment when I am bored (and hopefully I can entertain some of my friends when they are bored).
I think people are mature on LJ than they are here. I know I am.
Tags are ways of categorizing posts. So every time I add a post on, say, music, I can add “music” in the tags field. That word appears in the entry and becomes a link so BAM, readers can link to all of my music-related posts with a click. I can also send one URL to people to find all such posts. You can add more than one tag per entry, BTW. It’s a nice feature, but going back and tagging posts for three years is moider.
I like LJ.
I created an account in December, after meeting with my literature professor and deciding that it might be a good idea to start keeping a journal again (for practice writing outside of work). I wanted something online – yet private – that I could update from any computer, and something free: LJ fit the bill. I spent way too much time tinkering with various layouts, finally found one that I really like, and I was off and running. Sporadic entries, but it fit my needs.
About a month ago I decided to start making public LJ entries, too: I created some backdated entries where I posted things that I used to have on my old website, and I also copied all of my MPSIMS OPs over there (to get the ball rolling). Hardly any of my family or friends know about it yet, because I haven’t mentioned it much, but I’ll get around to telling them eventually. I don’t expect to wind up with any kind of readership, but a few people might check it from time to time. I still use it as a personal journal, too – in fact, one of my favorite things about LJ is that it’s easy to mark entries as “private.” For the public entries, I don’t post anything there that I wouldn’t post here. Seems like a good rule of thumb. 
I don’t have a friends list or anything, and I don’t use any of the social aspects of LJ so I can’t comment on it as a networking device. I just think it’s a pretty darn good journal program, especially for free.
I find LJ’s a great tool for keeping in touch with friends. My college friends are spread around the country, and almost all of us work, so it’s hard to talk one-on-one. LiveJournal helps fill that need. I’d never post to it from work, though. I know my employers technically don’t allow us on the 'net in the first place - not that anyone pays attention - but even so, I can remember a case or two of people getting in trouble for commenting about their jobs online, so I don’t want anything to be traceable.
I love my LJ for many of the reasons listed by everyone who has posted here. Besides SDMB, it has been one of my most rewarding experiences online besides meeting Jayjay, of course. As with most things, it is what you make of it.
I like it. Especially since I recently joined a very busy community, there’s always something fun or horrible to read. My own posts are mundane in the extreme, but I feel it keeps me from cluttering up other places (like here) with the silly details of my life.
I avoided getting an LJ account, for a long time. one of my least favorite things to talk about is myself. So, I didn’t see the point. But I went ahead and took the plunge a couple of months ago, mostly just to join a couple of communities I was interested in.
My favourite part of LJ is LJdrama.org. I’m just that type of person, really. It’s like all the locked threads in the SDMB, catalogued and archived for prosperity.
LJ itself, I don’t like so much. Mostly it’s an aesthetics thing. I know you can personalise and customise it, but I’ve yet to see an LJ customisation that made me sit up and go “That’s nice-looking, I’d like to have a page of my own like that”.