Just found out that Six Apart sold LiveJournal. As far as I know, it doesn’t really impact my life, but the details mentioned in the article got me thinking.
I don’t like MySpace, but it’s the social network that most people recognize and are drawn to when they want to contact old friends, etc. Facebook is gaining popularity and recognition, and thankfully is SLIGHTLY less obnoxious and shit-strewn than MySpace. But the fact remains, even if I prefer Facebook, I can’t not have a MySpace account if I’d like people to be able to find me.
For keeping an online journal, I originally created an account on LiveJournal (with some trepidation) after noticing my friend Libby used the service. I didn’t end up using it much, since I was just not inspired or moved to make entries at that point. After many changes in my life, I decided to start posting entries again, but at that time I was attempting to build a presence among friends on MySpace, so I used the built-in blog there. I posted a whole bunch of entries for the better part of a year, and finally realized that A) I hate MySpace and what it signifies, and B) as a blogging software, it rots. Back to LiveJournal. Ahhh, much better, a piece of online software that kinda has a purpose it works to fill. I ported over all my MySpace entries in a couple hours on an idle Sunday.
The thing that bugs me is that, in the social networking arena, competition is the complete antithesis of their mission. Bring people together, make it easier to find old friends, make it easier to communicate. When there are dozens of portals to get it done, and none of them interface with each other, you’re gonna have a bunch of not-so-tech-savvy people (the bulk of the market, I’d say) looking around, slack-jawed, two rooms down the hall from the person they’re looking for.
Facebook seems to be the only service I can find that kinda has a solution for bringing it all together. Having the ability to add applications that interface with the APIs for Twitter, LiveJournal, Flickr, etc, is probably the best thing they could have done.
The article about the sale of LiveJournal also confirmed a sad truth I had thought all along. Not much new business going their way. Everyone wants to get into Facebook and/or MySpace, because they want to put together big, flashy colorful pages without any thought or effort, or they want to get in on the hot vampire-on-zombie action. It’s sad, really. The majority doesn’t want to have a worthwhile exchange, the majority doesn’t want to express themselves openly, and the majority doesn’t want to peruse the open expressions of people who have something to say.
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Yes, today is a bitchy day. Sorry.
Google’s push for standardization around OpenSocial holds the promise of breaking some of these social silos. It’s not entirely altruistic since Google wants the social data indexable, but perhaps that in itself will also help break down the silos.
We’ll just have to wait and see.