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In a conversation last night I mentioned that Facebook is increasingly hostile towards non-members. For me, as a non-Facebook user, this typically presents itself as a masking popover or some other form of content obstruction on what are allegedly supposed to be public postings. Someone contrasted this with those halcyon days of Livejournal; specifically the ability for him to 'dip his toe' into conversations there without having to set up an account if he didn't want to.
Low friction, pseudo-anonymous content consumption is something I think any social platform is going to have to embrace if it wants to gain market share these days. Twitter enables this to some extent but imposes significant limits on what's visible and blocks all feedback. Reddit handles the consumption better (defined as 'with fewer restrictions'), but lacks any sort of pseudo anonymous participatory component.
I think Dreamwidth (and the LJ codebase that it's based upon) has this nailed. The content creator is given the tools to make their own decisions about how broadly they wish to define not only the consumption of their content but the participation as well. The whole platform is creator-centric in that it's easy to drill down to a particular personality and observe not only what they create but also how they interact with others. The reader can then decide for themselves if and how much they want to become a creator themselves via their interaction. That's fantastic, and something I don't see elsewhere.
Am I wrong in thinking this environment is unique like this?
In a conversation last night I mentioned that Facebook is increasingly hostile towards non-members. For me, as a non-Facebook user, this typically presents itself as a masking popover or some other form of content obstruction on what are allegedly supposed to be public postings. Someone contrasted this with those halcyon days of Livejournal; specifically the ability for him to 'dip his toe' into conversations there without having to set up an account if he didn't want to.
Low friction, pseudo-anonymous content consumption is something I think any social platform is going to have to embrace if it wants to gain market share these days. Twitter enables this to some extent but imposes significant limits on what's visible and blocks all feedback. Reddit handles the consumption better (defined as 'with fewer restrictions'), but lacks any sort of pseudo anonymous participatory component.
I think Dreamwidth (and the LJ codebase that it's based upon) has this nailed. The content creator is given the tools to make their own decisions about how broadly they wish to define not only the consumption of their content but the participation as well. The whole platform is creator-centric in that it's easy to drill down to a particular personality and observe not only what they create but also how they interact with others. The reader can then decide for themselves if and how much they want to become a creator themselves via their interaction. That's fantastic, and something I don't see elsewhere.
Am I wrong in thinking this environment is unique like this?
