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That's true; some of those folks just left the software industry, though, I think, or are at or approaching retirement age. Tangentially, it's still interestin

That's true; some of those folks just left the software industry, though, I think, or are at or approaching retirement age. Tangentially, it's still interesting -- and faintly depressing -- to me how much I think LiveJournal got right about social media that its bigger successors, well, don't, specifically related to privacy. LJ users had comparatively immense control over who could read and reply to posts. This isn't to say that Twitter and Facebook don't get a lot of things right, too, in terms of ease of posting, lack of friction, and (for both better and worse) monetization, but I wish "granularity of acces control" had been a lesson we'd carried forward. In any case, I'll be curious to see where Brad ends up next.

nostrademons 7y ago
When Google+ was under development in 2011, I remarked to my team "So, our differentiator from Facebook is...basically everything that LiveJournal had in 2002?"
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  Heh. While I never really got into Google+, its "circles" idea definitely reminded me of LJ -- and it seemed like a great idea. It seems like it might not have been communicated very well to the audience.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  Circles were great! Google+ was among the least obnoxious social media platforms I have experienced. I think it could really have replaced all the fragmented around Google comment forms, but it sure wasn't wise to force everyone on YouTube on it in such a shitty way. I think that initial public outcry was a significant stop to its velocity, yet it could have become moderately successful and very valuable long-term to slowly integrate all of Google's services. Just so many parts of the execution were questionable, including the mobile apps :\ Was the lack of a semi-immediate huge return the reason it was killed?
sundarurfriend 7y ago
At least one part of it is the faith that users can be smart people, rather than the current approach to customization UX which seems to be "take it all away from the fools".
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  I think part of that comes from the (reasonable) assumption that the simpler you make your UX, the less friction there is for people using your service. But it would be nice to see someone work on bringing more granularity and flexibility back to social media, even at the cost of a little more friction. (I also suspect some of it comes from people looking at Apple's historic "make simple things simple" approach to UX and taking the wrong lessons from it, which arguably includes latter-day Apple, but that's a whole different post...)
ValentineC 7y ago
> This isn't to say that Twitter and Facebook don't get a lot of things right, too, in terms of ease of posting, lack of friction, and (for both better and worse) monetization, but I wish "granularity of acces control" had been a lesson we'd carried forward. Facebook had incredible granularity with regard to who could view one's posts — then they nerfed it by letting the people who are on your "lists" view who else is on them. (I'm private enough to not want people to know that they're on my Close Friends list with 30 other people.) There was a way to get around this nerf by including a "smart list" in your set, but Facebook recently removed "smart lists" altogether. My Facebook post privacy settings are a mess now, and I also gave up and stopped posting anything personal. (I wanted to add that I used LiveJournal a lot in the early 2000's, and their friend list feature was amazing.)
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  I was never an enthusiastic Facebook user and didn't really get into lists there, so I'd forgotten about that feature. But it does seem Facebook's philosophy has moved ever closer to "just post and let The Algorithm™ figure out who to show it to."

nostrademons 7y ago

When Google+ was under development in 2011, I remarked to my team "So, our differentiator from Facebook is...basically everything that LiveJournal had in 2002?"

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
Heh. While I never really got into Google+, its "circles" idea definitely reminded me of LJ -- and it seemed like a great idea. It seems like it might not have been communicated very well to the audience.
solarkraft 7y ago
Circles were great! Google+ was among the least obnoxious social media platforms I have experienced. I think it could really have replaced all the fragmented around Google comment forms, but it sure wasn't wise to force everyone on YouTube on it in such a shitty way. I think that initial public outcry was a significant stop to its velocity, yet it could have become moderately successful and very valuable long-term to slowly integrate all of Google's services. Just so many parts of the execution were questionable, including the mobile apps :\ Was the lack of a semi-immediate huge return the reason it was killed?

sundarurfriend 7y ago

At least one part of it is the faith that users can be smart people, rather than the current approach to customization UX which seems to be "take it all away from the fools".

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
I think part of that comes from the (reasonable) assumption that the simpler you make your UX, the less friction there is for people using your service. But it would be nice to see someone work on bringing more granularity and flexibility back to social media, even at the cost of a little more friction. (I also suspect some of it comes from people looking at Apple's historic "make simple things simple" approach to UX and taking the wrong lessons from it, which arguably includes latter-day Apple, but that's a whole different post...)

ValentineC 7y ago

> This isn't to say that Twitter and Facebook don't get a lot of things right, too, in terms of ease of posting, lack of friction, and (for both better and worse) monetization, but I wish "granularity of acces control" had been a lesson we'd carried forward. Facebook had incredible granularity with regard to who could view one's posts — then they nerfed it by letting the people who are on your "lists" view who else is on them. (I'm private enough to not want people to know that they're on my Close Friends list with 30 other people.) There was a way to get around this nerf by including a "smart list" in your set, but Facebook recently removed "smart lists" altogether. My Facebook post privacy settings are a mess now, and I also gave up and stopped posting anything personal. (I wanted to add that I used LiveJournal a lot in the early 2000's, and their friend list feature was amazing.)

chipotle_coyote 7y ago
I was never an enthusiastic Facebook user and didn't really get into lists there, so I'd forgotten about that feature. But it does seem Facebook's philosophy has moved ever closer to "just post and let The Algorithm™ figure out who to show it to."