When it comes to awesome online communities, there are quite a few. One worth looking into is a very growing and popular one: LiveJournal, which is commonly abbreviated into simply “lj”. This online community holds lots of great features for those wishing to be part of an online group and interact with people all over the world. It is very similar to other popular sites such as MySpace and Friendster, however lj has some unique aspects that truly make it one of a kind. Run from founders based out of San Francisco, California, lj is quickly catching up to competitors. Created by a young man named Brad Fitzpatrick, the main goal of lj was to simply stay in touch with his school friends. It quickly gained momentum, and in the year 2005, he sold it to Six Apart, a huge software blogging company.
The lj site is a community that is set up so that a person need not go elsewhere. One of the most popular aspects of the lj site is the Friends List. When it comes to icons, LiveJournal has very easy to follow icons that easily allows a user to navigate through the site. A member of lj can make their account and profile to look many different ways and really show who they are as an individual. There are many templates to choose from and a person can add pre-made avatars and pictures.
There is a User Info page, that hold numerous information including a person’s biography, pictures, the Friends List, a person may enter all of the interests they have and most people like to type in the schools that they have been to or are currently attending.
Each user also has a "User Info" page, which contains a variety of data including contact information, a biography, images (linked from off-site sources), and lists of friends, interests, communities, and even the schools which the user has attended in the past or is currently attending.
What is very interesting is that lj has an element that will let a member add video posts; this is done by calling into the database and then recording an entry. The features that a person can use will depend on which type level member they wish to be. One may wish to have a free account and this will give a person the use of almost all the features, about ninety-five percent. If a person chooses to have a paid account, they will be given more icons in the lj site and be given more space to create a profile.
The way in which members communicate with each other comes in three different forms. When two people are making contact with each other, they may be listed as having no relationship, being friends with each other or only one party may list the other as a friend. On the lj site, if someone “friends” another person, this is slang for meaning that they added them to the Friends List. Once a person is listed as another’s friend, they will then have access to otherwise private journals and entries. There are also groups of people who choose to become one large group of friends. .
If a person chooses, they can keep all of their information private and anything that they type will not be picked up by Internet search engines. This is a very important aspect, as a person may have a lot of things they wish to post to friends, but not ever have seen online by others. After all, that is what makes an online community such as lj so popular, it is like being in a neighborhood with friends and the gates are locked for anyone that is not welcomed.