LiveJournal: still goodie or just oldie

Can a blast from past, such as LiveJournal, still capture the interest of today's social media savvy partakers? More importantly, can LJ's free version fulfill the needs of a PR professional?


In a nutshell, LiveJournal is an online community that links people through their diaries. You can write a journal, add friends, search for other users’ journals, and join communities based on your interests.

First impression of LiveJournal? Cute. However, therein lies the problem. Blogging is a way to share our personal brand with the world; and we want to be taken seriously. Pink backgrounds and bouncy kitty emoticons will not do.


LiveJournal does connect to more popular social networking outlets, like Facebook, as well as utilizes your cell phone. This is pretty cool seems like a game of catch-up, for an online community that is already 10 years old.

I leave you with three LiveJournal fails:

• In exploring LJ for the purpose of this review, I landed here. Somehow, my journal account directs me to Russian LiveJournal on certain links. I don't know how to change this; I can't read it to find the English button. (LiveJournal is now owned by Russian company, SUP, run by LiveJournal Inc.)


• LJ allows you to create a ScrapBook to store online pictures. Why use ScrapBook? I’m still unsure. I investigated and clicked through journals at random, hoping to find the answer. None of them used ScrapBook; I’m sure no one uses it I didn’t use a good representative sample.


• Finally, the text everywhere on LJ tells me to upgrade to a paid account. Even while signing up I was informed that LiveJournal is better if you pay for it. It's frustrating not to be able to access certain features, like browsing communities by region.

Maybe that’s the main problem. LiveJournal becomes the community you want if you dish out the $19.95/year for a paid membership. So I will never know what treasures lie within.

I suspect with more customization options, LiveJournal can probably become more useful to a PR professional, perhaps for community-building purposes or networking. But generally, LJ is pretty dated; there's too many blogging options available now. LiveJournal started out as a source of entertainment, and I think entertainment it will stay.

I wish LiveJournal a happy 10th birthday and give it 2 out of 5 bouncy kitty heads.




Please see Aasana's blog on a different take of LiveJournal.