I am finally getting around to my minutes of the Berkman Thursday Blog group meeting on Live Journal. Thanks again to Josh Ain for leading this session. This was my first introduction to Live Journal and I was impressed with a tool that is very targeted to the needs of its audience. Other blog tools should take a look at their focused approach for their targeted audiences.
Live Journal is known as the blog tool for teenage girls and the demographic support this with 67% of users (who report gender) are female and the middle of a classic bell curve in age distribution with the peak at 16 – 17 years. You can create a friend’s list and see the friend’s lists of others. It optimizes contact with small groups of 10 to 25 people rather than broad distribution of content to a mass audience. You can create posts that only your friends can see and explicitly exclude people, like your parents.
Live Journal started in 1999 and has been bought by Six Apart, the people who own my blog tool, TypePad. I am not going to switch but I was impressed with how they effectively serve their audience. Over seven million Live Journal blogs have been started but only around 2 million are active now. It is open source and the basic package of features is free to users.
Greetings Bill
Off topic: Still might you find this compelling read - Citizen Journalism
It's one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business these days. Many news executives are probably thinking about implementing some sort of citizen-journalism initiative; a small but growing number have already done so.
But there's plenty of confusion about citizen journalism. What exactly is it? Is this something that's going to be essential to the future prosperity of news companies?
In my conversations and communications with editors, I sense plenty of confusion about the concept. There's enthusiasm about experimenting in some quarters -- about harnessing the power of an audience permitted for the first time to truly participate in the news media. But mostly I hear concern and healthy skepticism.
So let's explore the possibilities, from dipping a toe into the waters of participatory journalism to embracing citizen reporting with your organization's full involvement. We'll start out slow and build toward the most radical visions of what's possible.
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=83126 - The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism
[Note the related links on the right side such as http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=82082 Citizen-Journalism Sites: Don't Be Boring
Whether you're a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you've been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post
http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/ Legal Guide for Bloggers ]
Posted by: Jozef Imrich | June 15, 2005 at 08:51 AM