Website Review: Livejournal.Com

Long before Myspace, Brad Fitzpatrick created a little website called LiveJournal, which is a social networking site of sorts, but it has more of a focus on blogging. Oddly enough, the site was only created as a way for Brad to keep up with his many friends.

Back in 2005, Six Apart purchased the company that ran Livejournal, which was called Danga Interactive, of course Brad Fitzpatrick created it as well. Later in 2007, Six Apart sold the Livejournal to a big name Russian company by the name of SUP.

Now that we have that out of the way, your probably wondering if Livejournal is a half way decent social networking site, correct? I'm going to go to the site and check out the good and the bad, and the ugly so you don't have to. Lets get started, shall we?

*Good

There are many good things about Livejournal, they offer most of the things that Myspace and Facebook offer. Only difference with Livejournal is that there is more emphasis on blogging, or journal writing.

Every journal entry submitted has its very own web page, your friends are able to comment on that page. However, if you do not wish for friends to be able to see the page, there are numerous options one could enable to stop such things.

Paid customers are able to "voice post", which is pretty new for a social networking site. Another thing that other social networking sites don't have that Livejournal offers is five different user levels, each enabling the user to have more options, but some you have to pay for.

In addition, I really enjoy the layout and the feel of the site, it has a professional but yet fun feel to it. Seems like it would be great to keep in contact with friends, or just for someone wanting to keep an online journal.

*Bad

Sadly, there are a few things that kinda bug me about this website. While I understand that they too must make money, they limit what the normal customers can do unless they upgrade to a paid account. Most social networking sites don't do this, for example pretty much everything I can think of on Myspace is free.

The only other bad thing I can think about on this site that's somewhat bad is the fact that sometimes you can run into jerks. Although that can happen on any website, on Livejournal all you have to do is block them.

Overall, Livejournal is a very good social networking site that can be used for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you want to advertise your business, or just want to keep in contact with friends, Livejournal can help you with both of those if need be.