Why I Love Livejournal

I've been blogging on Livejournal for years and well before I started this class LJ taught me what a powerful tool blogs are not only for finding information but for getting the information/news/stories you're interested in to come to you. In the concise style we're trying to develop for this class, I love Livejournal because it:

• Allows you to 'Friend' other blogs (much the same as Following) and then creates a page where all the posts on all the blogs you're friended to are displayed in chronological order in blog format, from newest to oldest. Fantastic for keeping up with everything you're interested in, all organised on one page. Alternately, great for communicating with a group of people simultaneously.

• Allows you to create 'communities' which combine the best features of blogs and wikis in one unit. A Livejournal community is a multi-user blog in which multiple people have posting authority. A group of people with common interestes or related expertise can come together to create a community which then functions as a one-stop resource on a given subject.

• Communities can be friended too. By friending large communities for all your interests you can have a wealth of personally relevant information delivered to your online doorstep.

• Allows you to post with different levels of access so a given post will only be seen by the people you want to see it. One post might be for anyone who comes to your blog, another is only accessible by a select group of online friends and another is reserved for your work peers. You can comparmentalise your online life in one blog.

• Allows you to create tag clouds or lists according to your preference to organise all your posts and to put links to all your favourite websites and blogs in columns to either side of your posts. You can organise a large chunk of your online life from one page.

• Allows you to put any date you like on a post - many people use this feature to 'headline' an introductory or explanatory post at the top of their blog.

• Allows you to embed links, pictures and video into posts easily. Also lets you use html for effects.

• Has a search function that allows you to search by interest, so you can seek out exactly what you're interested in. The search engine isn't Libray-precise but it utilises a google-style ranking system.

• 27 million separate blogs and communities. One hundred to two hundred thousand posts in any given day. With that much information there's guaranteed to be something you're interested in.

If you want to see for yourself, go to http://www.livejournal.com/ and be impressed.