Live Journal Communities

What is Live Journal? Live Journal Review

In Blogging, Live Journal Blog by Mark GuertinLeave a Comment

What is Live Journal? Live Journal Review

LiveJournal – A Gathering of People Who Share Your Interests and Passions

One of the best ways to describe LiveJournal (LJ) is that it’s a social network and blogging platform in one. In the age of Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress, why else would you consider signing up with this platform?

LiveJournal Features

  • Publishing posts

Undoubtedly the main feature of LJ. Just like any other blogging platform, you have the option to upload pictures, schedule posts, and insert polls into your post.

Blog Posting At Live Journal

Blog Posting At Live Journal

Highly advanced blog posting features

  • Joining communities

This is basically like Facebook Groups and Google+ Communities where people of similar interests converge to discuss their passions. They can comment on existing discussions or create one of their own.

Live Journal Communities

Live Journal Communities

Find, join and create communities

  • Making friends

You can search the site using keywords to find users with similar interests as yours. The “friend system” on LJ is not mutual as the person you added as friend can opt not to follow you back.

  • Filtering friends

This functions just like Facebook and Twitter lists. This comes in handy if you’ve got a few interests and would like to separate users who share the same into different categories.

Live Journal Friend Filtering Options

Live Journal Friend Filtering Options

Easily filter your friends

  • User interaction

A blog wouldn’t be a social affair if you didn’t allow people to comment on your posts. Just like other systems, LJ threads replies to comments creating a traceable nest for you to follow.

A Peek into LiveJournal’s Beginning

LJ was started by American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick on April 15, 1999. The reason he created the platform was that he wanted to keep his friends from high school updated with his activities.

Blogging software company Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive – the company that operated LJ – in January 2005. In 2007, Six Apart sold LJ to SUP Media, a Russian media company. In January 2009, some staff members of LJ were laid off and product development and design functions were moved to Russia.

LiveJournal Statistics

LJ gained a huge popularity in Russia, and around 700,000 of the journals on the site are owned by Russians with about 300,000 of them being active. In particular, a lot of political pundits in Russia use the platform for political commentary.

Here are other interesting statistics about LJ:

  • 59.5% of its users are female, while 40.5% are male.
  • ONTD (Oh No They Didn’t) – which focuses on celebrity and pop culture – is the largest community on the site with over 112,000 members and over 3 million monthly visitors.
  • The meme involving Nyan Cat started in LJ and so did the meme involving Christian Bale and Kermit striking similar poses.
  • There are 46 million journals and communities on the site across the world.
  • There are 6,250 posts per hour on the site.
  • The top five languages used on the site are Russian, English, French, German, and Spanish.
  • The top ten countries using LJ are Russia, USA, Ukraine, UK, Canada, Belarus, Germany, Singapore, Australia, and Israel.
  • Most of the members of the site are aged 21-25, followed by 26-30, then 31-35. People aged 41 years and above participate the least.
  • Apart from ONTD, ArmaTheyDidn’t (Japanese pop culture), Anything (celeb gossip), and Craftgirl (for crafters) are among the top communities on the site.

Notable people on LiveJournal

A lot of users on LJ became well known because of the content of their posts, but LJ also boasts of several well-known personalities making use of their platform to share information:

  • Sarah Dessen, author
  • Cassandra Clare, author
  • George R. R. Martin, author
  • Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister of Russia
  • Garry Kasparov, World Chess Champion

So, why use LiveJournal?

After gleaning on the features, you can see that other platforms provide them so, why stick with LJ? To help you out, answer the following questions:

  • Do you like posting by voice message from your mobile phone?
  • Do you like posting by just sending an email?
  • Do you like to tie Google Analytics to your blog?
  • Do you like to have domain mapping to connect your blog and website?
  • Do you like being interconnected to Facebook, Twitter and VK?
  • Do you like being able to advertise to a wide audience?
  • Do you like being able to use custom blog themes?
  • Do you like the idea of networking with many people from Russia?
  • Do you like being able to filter adult content?
  • Do you like being able to choose what type of advertising you see?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then LJ is the right community for you. It’s purely for blogging purposes, but it’s also an awesome platform to get your message across a great network of like-minded users.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions about Live Journal feel free to post them here in the comments below. Also, if you would like to share with us your Live Journal blog we would be happy to discuss that too.

You can find us at Live Journal and our profile ID is impactsocialme1@livejournal.com You are also welcome to visit our blog there by going to http://impactsocialme1.livejournal.com/

Video: What is LiveJournal? LiveJournal is an online community, a social network, and a place for self-expression. LiveJournal is a global social media network with millions of blogs and thousands of communities whose members discuss and share anything and everything.

Visit Live Journal and get started blogging now at http://livejournal.com/

Leave a Comment