(Not important enough for a General Question.)
So inspired by the Opal Cat thread I went over to Live Journal. (Apparently called ‘LJ’ by us hep cats.) I set up an account. Now what? What does this thing do?
Remember, use little tiny non-tecnical words so that I might understand.
I moved this over to MPSIMS from Cafe Society. It’s a better fit.
LiveJournal is just blogging software. You can create a free account, and pay to upgrade if you’d like some bonus features (like an increased number of avatars, the option to insert polls, voice posting, etc…). You can start and join Communities, like the SDMB one; and, well, there’s not much more to it.
LJ is a blog in the original sense. It’s more than that, though - it has a very strong sense of community. People will join communities dedicated to every topic and purpose under the sun, and some over the sun to boot. Also there are communities about boots. The point is that it’s a network, and quite a stable one at that.
It’s MySpace 1.0.
You don’t have to use it as a network, either. Heaven knows I didn’t start with the community thing until I was well into it. Lots of people use it purely as blogging software. It’s a space where you can easily write or post whatever you want and make it available to whoever you want (including everyone and no one). I use it primarily as a diary; I like to be able to go back in time and see what I thought about something. Some folks I have as friends use it as a sort of poetry corner. Some post their photography. Some lash out at people.
It’s free, easily customisable (more or less) webspace. It’s whatever you want it to be.
OK, so I am on it. Let me mess with it. Come and visit. I have a nice avatar and am using this same user name.
Whatever you like; I use mine as a commonplace book {hence the sig}, and am slowly transcribing about 20 years worth of odd collected written passages that have stricken my fancy.
OK, I am now a SDMB group member. I think. I am still waiting for something interesting to happen.
My favorite thing about LJ is the friends lock option. Almost everything I’ve written since I got to BG is behind the lock. If I couldn’t control who read my LJ…well, I’d be a sadder person.
One of the first things I did on LJ was to go to the SDMB community’s member info page and click on names I recognized. That led me to their journals. There’s a button at the top of everyone’s user info page which, when clicked, puts him/her on your “Friends” list. If they friend you back, there ya go 
A couple of things:
Unwritten LJ protocal is to let the person you’re friending know you’re friending them. You usually ask in their last public post (i.e., “Do you mind if I friend you?”), or friend them first then tell them you did so.
A lot of Dopers have locked journals for a number of reasons. OTOH, there are some who don’t. I’m in the former because a lot of people on my FL [LJ parlance for “Friends List”] have been trolled in the past. I never have, but you can never tell.
As for communities, if you go up to the “Find” box at the upper right corner of your user info page and write any kind of interest, chances are there’s an LJ community about it. In the beginning that’s how I added communities to my FL. I dropped a few of them as time passed, but there are others that’ll stay there for eternity. I add to the list every so often, too.
The funny thing is, I never write in my LJ anymore. Well, only once in a blue moon I guess. I still keep it up because of the friends list feature. You’re able to see all the posts from people and communities you’ve ‘friended’ in one list. Or, with the relatively new friends filter feature, you can divide said friends and communities into subgroups and view them individually. (I’ve got mine divided into “People”, “Good Communities” (communities with actual substance and thoughtfulness behind them), and “Annoying Communities” (communities that are sometimes interesting, but tend to have way too many posts per day)
On a tangent, does anybody know of any blog sites that existed before LJ? Not people’s personal websites or anything, but an actual website dedicated to letting people share their feelings.
Because, as far as I can remember, LJ was the OG in that area (or OB, I suppose).
As for calling it Myspace 1.0, I don’t think that’s exactly fair. Sure, Myspace probably drew elements (and whiny emo kids) from LJ, but it also drew elements from other sites like Face the Jury and Hot or Not. Myspace is more vanity based, while LJ is for the most part more content based.
Please. Live Journal and MySpace don’t even remotely resemble each other. I actually approve of LJ and I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. It’s a pretty decent site, actually, and I second the valuable lock feature.
It’s actually inspired me to keep a journal, which I was never able to do in my entire life. I don’t post in it daily, but couple times a week.
It’s great.
How old is DiaryLand.com? That’s what my friends and I used circa 1999-2000.
Paul - You have an interesting and unique living/working situation. You’re a great candidate to have a highly-read blog. If you just write about daily stuff that goes on in the life of an American living & working in Saudi Arabia people will read it.
If you write it - they will come 
I was just thinking the same thing
In truth, I can’t right now. November is NaNoWroMo and I have to pound out 50,000 words of cheap science fiction. (On the other hand, perhaps I could post my efforts for public ridicule.)
That’s what I’m going to be working on too. See you there - well, metaphorically I suppose. 
I use my livejournal purely as a blog. Just to make things easier, there’s a Firefox addon called “performancing” that will let you blog from any page - it works with Wordpress (I have a wordpress installation on my domain) and Livejournal, and a plethora of others. I use performancing with Firefox to blog; I rarely actually go to livejournal to blog. It IS great for keeping track of your friends, though, because you have an entire friends page, rather than having to go to each blog separately.
Someone said that it’s Myspace 1.0 - it IS like Myspace, with more emo but less suck.
~Tasha
I started my LiveJournal a couple of months ago and I get kind of a kick out of it. I use it – to paraphrase another Doper – to let people in my life know what’s happening without having to bore them by actually telling them. So far one real-life friendship has, if not been caused by LJ, blossomed because of it (a Doper, incidentally). I have a couple of other Dopers “friended” as well, and I’m coming to consider at least one of them a friend (though it’s unlikely we’ll meet in the foreseeable future).
At first my blog was largely “friends only,” but I’ve since removed all restrictions on the theory that a) people who know me won’t be shocked by anything, and b) if people I don’t know are reading, well, it’s nothing to worry about.
Incidentally, not that anyone asked, but my blog is here. I thought I should post it in case anyone was doing a search for my Doper name, which isn’t what I use for LJ. Anyway, interested parties may feel free to friend me; though the blog is open for viewing by anyone, I like to know who’s reading.