Recently, a number of my Livejournal friends have indicated they are moving their journaling to Facebook. This has gotten me thinking about the differences between the two services, which is something I’ve seen as a user of both. I think the differences are informative, and reflect other trends in society. So I decided to take a little time over lunch to jot down my ideas.
Think back 80 years. We had social networking then: the handwritten letter. This was a particular communication form well suited to what I call “long form” communication: multiple well-thought out paragraphs that might be read and re-read to gain additional meaning. As technology improved, this communication form was supplanted by the telephone (and to a lesser extent, telegraph messages). These were a form of “short form” communication: more stream of consciousness, more bursty, more snippets of information that weren’t thought out in advance. As e-mail emerged, it too took the short form of communication, supplanting the longer written letter (although there were the occasional long emails, but more often, there were short emails with documents attached).
We’ve also seen this in the entertainment fields. Theatre and cinema are long-form entertainment: they require focused attention for periods up to 3 hours. Televisions has encouraged short and even shorter forms. Where there were once hour and half-hour scripted series, TV has moved into short snippets that don’t require attention (some blame this on Sesame Street and the rapid cuts). We’ve been encouraging our own ADD. Ohhh, shiney.
In the last few years, social networking sites have blossomed and withered. Friendster. Linked-in. Plaxo. My Space. Facebook. Livejournal. Dreamwidth. Twitter. We have also seen the growth of blogs and online journals. Again, this long-form vs. short-form distinction is coming into play.
Online blogs and Livejournal/Dreamwidth tend to encourage the long-term. LJ/DW has the advantage over general blogs (blogger, blogspot) in that one has more controls over visibility (i.e., one can restrict visibility to friends or custom lists of friends, something that can’t be done easily on most blogging services). There are also blogging services within MySpace, and the Notes service within Facebook is essentially a blog, although one has less control over formatting and graphics. Certainly LJ users are used to long and thoughtful entries; it is unclear the reaction to those entries on Facebook (at least I seem to get less FB comments on Notes). These long-form entries typically take time to write, and it is not uncommon for the author to keep tinkering with the entry after it is posted — services usually provide the ability to edit the entry.
Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, encourage the short-form. Tweets are short. Status updates are short. Even links to articles and photos are short form: there isn’t much thought behind posting a link and adding a sentence or two. The growth of Facebook and Twitter may be precisely because today’s generation, raised on the telephone, TV, and email, prefer short bursty communication that doesn’t demand their attention.
Can the services work together or complement each other? Sure. One can post short-form items on Livejournal/Dreamwidth. One can connect the services between LJ and FB: one can go into notes and define import settings, permitting FB to automatically import public LJ posts as Notes via RSS or Atom feeds. One can write blog entries on Facebook via the Notes service, and can even restrict visibility to “friends-only” or custom groups. One can blog on MySpace, but who reads Myspace anymore :-)?
I think, in choosing a service, one must look at one’s style of journaling. If your tendancy is towards the long-form piece, possibily sensitive, then I still believe LJ/DW is the place to be. It is better than Facebook, in the sense that one’s notes tend to be more restricted by default on Facebook, decreasing the size of the audiences for one’s obstensibly public posts. If LJ/DW is used, one can have those entries auto-fed into the Facebook notes (something that can’t be done on MySpace), thus sharing them with that audience. For restricted accessibility entries, one must post to both services separately to define the security level. [I’ll also note that only LJ gives the ability to do voice posts and posting by email, to my knowledge]
If you are a short-form writer, then going to a Facebook-only approach or Twitter may be for you. Facebook is great for the short attention span: status updates abound, quiz results populate your news stream (unless you suppress them), and folks are constantly posting photos and links, with short and pithy comments.
As for me, I think I’m a long-form writer. For the time being, I’ll maintain my long form writing base here at Livejournal. If the service degrades, I may move to Dreamwidth. I will, however, have my thoughts and writings syndicated to Facebook, and will hand-crosspost, as appropriate, entries with more restricted distribution. For short-form items (such as periodic status updates unworthy of a post), I’ll just post them to Facebook. I still don’t see a need to Tweet.
I’ll note there is one thing Facebook is quite good for: reconnecting (if that’s something you want to do). By using people’s real names, one can find those old friends you lost touch with… and they might find you 🙁 or :-), depending on your point of view. Of course, there’s a downside to this: managers or potential employers might be able to search on your real name and find those pictures of you in a compromising position (which I why I never permit such pictures to be taken). Still, I’ve reconnected with friends and family that I could never entice to Livejournal.
