LiveJournal VS. MySpace... Um, Why?

Many moons ago, I saw someone's LiveJournal randomly cruising the Internet slowly through my AOL browser. I thought it was just so cool that you could include your current mood and music. That's all that got me dragged into signing up for a LiveJournal. I was about 4 months short of being an Early Adopter.

I let it sit for quite a while (I forgot about it), but came back to, basically, fight with someone. It was 2001 and the entity known as MySpace was still quite a ways off.

I had no friends, no idea how to customize a layout and really no idea how to write a semi-interesting entry, but I sure could fill out my current mood and music like a pro. I stuck to it and made bunches of friends (making a Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson quiz before the days of Quizilla helped out quite a bit, too) and got really into it. I can say that LiveJournal honed my typing and grammar skills and really gave me a taste of writing for an audience. Maybe I'm awful at this, I don't know. Don't friends have to say you're talented..?

At any rate, LiveJournal seemed to appeal to a throng of intelligent people who sincerely wanted to be a part of a community. While LiveJournal got complaints all the time about the invite codes, I felt like they were a good idea. Nothing short of an electric fence will keep the trolls at bay, but there didn't seem to be quite as much trash on LiveJournal as there were on other journaling sites built on the same source code.

I was a support volunteer on LiveJournal for a spell, but stopped because there's some favoritism going on, and that's just too big a pet peeve for me personally.

I have maintained a paid account on LiveJournal since 2002, and have updated it religiously as well. My friends list used to bustle with photos and links, good news, bad news, all of it.

Enter MySpace. I signed up in 2004 and never thought it would be any sort of threat or a comparable being to LiveJournal. Slowly more and more people I knew signed up - and my LiveJournal experience started to change. Invite codes had gone the way of the dinosaurs and more kinks were being worked out of the system so even on a free account you could attain decent speeds on the site. Old LiveJournal was notorious for being very, very slow.

It was clear some of LiveJournal's important user activity was going by the wayside. Sure, accounts were being created at a rapid pace, and still are, but MySpace was now in the popularity contest, and was taking quite a few of LiveJournal's fair weather followers with it.

What sucked users into MySpace? Here are a few things I think swayed a lot of people:

Space for real photos. Everybody loves to show off on the Internet.
It's easier to customize MySpace profiles. Thinking is just such a drag and crashing Internet Explorer is WIN!!!
You can be popular on MySpace. I'm #1!!!
Private messaging. You don't even need to give out an actual email anymore.
A presence without much substance. You can fill out a blurb about yourself, tastes in movie, music and books, and nothing more.
Embedded media. Let the whole world see your awful taste in music.

I'm not saying every MySpacer is a superficial, empty headed dumb-dumb. I'm saying the blog is there if you want to complain about something or show off your new glitzy cell phone or lip piercing and talk about your new boyfriend. In the event you really have nothing to say, you can at least show the world pictures of your sweet, fresh hairstyle.

MySpace had the show-off appeal. At its core it is nothing like LiveJournal at all. This is why I'm a bit confused as to why LiveJournal has made attempts that to me look like a desperate stab to emulate MySpace.

We already have one MySpace, we don't need another.

Six Apart (6A) acquired LiveJournal in early 2005. These are the guys and gals who created Movable Type and TypePad. This was an interesting time for LJer's because a lot of us could feel the effect of MySpace on the site, and now Brad Fitzpatrick was selling LiveJournal to a company most of us had never heard of. All kinds of fears crept in. People worried the entire format of the site would be changed and the original idea and basic structure would be lost. I'll admit, I was one of them.

On the other side of that, you had the bloggers for Six Apart wondering what the hell us LiveJournalers were going to be like. I don't think they knew much; just that we have a flair for the dramatic... and that can be a bit true. I won't lie.

To sum it up, you had a lot of people wigging out for a lot of reasons. I'll give some credit to Six Apart, because I can log onto my LiveJournal and it really is still like the old days. I'm never forced to interact with any other bloggers who think I'm so lame because I LiveJournal and don't blog. I like that, and I'm sure they do, too.

Shortly before and since Six Apart acquired LiveJournal, features were being added that seemed a bit close to MySpace features. While I think some were a good idea (the ScrapBook feature is probably great, but I never use mine), I feel some were instituted not to keep the site competitive in general, but to keep up with MySpace.

Video embedding is the prevalent annoyance to me. I'm thankful there is no autoplay on them, so if I must look on the bright side...

Overall I can't nitpick about LiveJournal's evolution. I don't personally have to deal with the ads on the Sponsored+ accounts. It does seem like there are a lot less "perks" to having a paid account anymore, and that bugs me a bit, too.

Perhaps I should be grateful that MySpace picked up some of the slack that LiveJournal would have had to otherwise deal with; that slack being endless accounts created and abandoned and probably a great deal more spam. LiveJournal has grown and will probably continue to grow exponentially and naturally has lost some of the sense of community I once felt. It is a business and always has been, but it felt much more quaint before it tried so hard to keep up with the MySpaces of the Internet.

I get on MySpace a lot and do use many of its features, of course, it will never be a proxy for LiveJournal, where I can really put it all out there to people I choose to include, but I still think MySpace is a sign of the end of the universe.

Or maybe that's just a LiveJournaler doing what they do best: Being dramatic.