Research Report By Christian Galvan

By Christian Galvan, Timeline Project

Research Report: LiveJournal

Abstract

            LiveJournal is a website that allows the user to communicate extensively and share his/her thoughts with others. Relying heavily on html and software built into the website itself, the website features an easy to navigate interface that is easy on the eyes. In this manner, the website has attracted the attention of people online as the website claims to have more than 200,000 different posts a day. This popularity has thrown the website into the mainstream online blogging world, and only through heavy exploring of the website and its different features does one come to realize why it is so attractive for one hoping to share their thoughts.

Description

            One of the growing trends on the internet is the ability for oneself to heavily personalize the atmosphere in order to appeal to the user’s specific tastes. Even checking e-mail on Yahoo is a matter of customizing as one can create a personal avatar (definition: “an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user (as in a computer game)) and choose the colors and themes that cater to taste (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary). LiveJournal is no exception to this idea, and creating an account with the website allows the user to customize their layout to the point that their blog is a shrine to their own beliefs and reminiscence.

            At the start though, every blog looks exactly the same as the user is treated to a rather bland interface that looks simple and similar to the website’s homepage. This is the default layout, which is really the only case in which all blogs will look and contain the same ideas and themes. First of all, the website allows the user to find and meet friends, as it contains an extensive directory search that allows a user to meet friends through e-mail, user names, and location. Similar to a phone directory, this idea is powered by a search engine that may limit the parameters down to even music tastes. This is the backbone of the website, since finding friends online is facilitated. This then transitions to the feature that keeps most users busy once they are done finding all their necessary friends online. Enter the community feature, which simply starts out by asking the user whether they will be creating their own community. Through a community, one can recruit a group of people that share the same taste or are interested in the same area. For example, one could start out a community favoring the popular basketball team, the “Los Angeles Lakers”. Not before long, the community may have up to thousands of Lakers fans and the community will disperse into separate discussions that really allow for an immersive and expressive forum. Through the use of uploading photos and wallpapers, the theme can then take on one that would be candidate to the design of the community. This is definitely a model for a group setting that one would see in real life and serves as a way for the users to feel like they belong to something they favor.

            Besides having an array of links that allow a user to communicate and share their expressions with others, LiveJournal employs a “customization-friendly” blogging system. Whether one prefers to go through the layouts, themes, and colors provided by the LiveJournal account editor, the website can be changed to a theme that can feature colors, backgrounds, and even subtleties that suit the user. Of course, the website has a space where one can take a copied html code provided by third party websites and paste it into the blog layout. As a result, one can have a profile that may rival even some consumer websites out there. For example, upon going into this blog: http://wendylady2.livejournal.com/, a very elaborate layout is visible. While it may look mainstream and ornate, it seems to cater to the writer’s thoughts (a fashion critic), as it is detailed in heavy red and black. Consequently, there is a nice mash-up of professional and online etiquette, as the website looks very nicely made, but retains the status and clichés of internet blogs. Upon further exploration, each blog is in reverse chronological order, which unlike a journal, starts out with the latest entry. Each entry features the time, a bold heading (which may look stylish if one utilizes a pre-made layout), and an avatar of the user. This avatar is usually a picture of the user him/herself, adding a sense of reality to the perspective of the blog. Correspondingly, the entries end up looking very personal to the user, as other people (namely friends) can make comments on the public entries. This resembles an online forum, as each blog could bring up an idea that might instigate a deep conversation amongst friends, or a silly interjection that might inspire some funny reactions. But in either case, the tool of being able to express oneself online is vivid throughout LiveJournal.

            However, the website charges no fee to the user and this comes at a cost. There are numerous advertisements found in the homepage and the user’s log-in page. This might make the interface rather clunky and sometimes unpleasant to the users. The LiveJournal developers seem to be aware of this matter though, as the advertisements are not found within the blog posts themselves. This allows the most expressive part of the concept to stay free of distractions and ads. Nevertheless, some of these advertisements may be useful to the user, as they may link to other tools that may allow for further customization of the profile. One can look up the weather, news, music, and even horoscopes through the “links” that LiveJournal offers. So in the end, it is arguable whether LiveJournal’s advertisements serve as a form of mainstream activity, or if it further develops the user’s investment of time in this online blogging community.  

Commentary

            LiveJournal is the basis for the team project idea that explores timelines and the mixing of different stories found within The Canterbury Tales. Through this website, our team hopes to find a way of setting up an account for every main character in the work that presents an important story. In this manner, having quotes from each others work and then clarifying it in a modern “online” manner would allow readers of the book to grasp certain concepts that they could not have understood in the old English format. Ideally, each character would have a very specific avatar. For example, the Wife of Bath would have an older and somewhat attractive woman in place for the avatar. The theme of the blog entries would be quite feminine and the wallpaper would be that of a lustful and controlling wife. Within the blog entries, a user would see her tale in different parts that would allow for comprehension of the important sections, making her ideas clear and accessible similar to a chapter by chapter play of the tale. Additionally, commentary by the other characters (which would have their own account) would be made to match that of the interjections made by the actual characters in the Canterbury Tales. Finally, the community feature would allow for a page for all the pilgrims to congregate and hang out, similar to the tavern. As a result, readers of this book would be treated to a very modern and blog-like form of the Canterbury Tales. This would give readers that didn’t understand the book an insight on plot elements and characters that may not have been as apprehensible. Finally, our Simile timeline’s markers would highlight a certain tale and the order in which it came in, along with a handy link that would point to the more explicit and elaborate blog entry by the character him/herself. The final result would then be a project that clashes the old English method of expression with that of today’s online modern world, and exploit the fact that they are quite similar.

Resources For Further Study

·         LiveJournal’s Terms of Service

"LiveJournal's Terms of Service." LiveJournal. 18 Apr 2006. 21 Feb 2008 <http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml>.

·         Blogging Popularity

Stanfield, Alyson, "Blog time: the popularity of blogs is exploding. Find out how you can reap the benefits." Art Business News 34(2007): 46.