Mmmm ... I see what you mean. I think part of it is I visited LJ for awhile, reading different journals here, commented as "anonymous," and read through the entire FAQ before even signing up in the first place, so I dedicated a good chunk of time to becoming familiar with it. And I still discover/learn new things, years later (but I also was absent for most of nearly 2 years, so I haven't regularly been using my LJ as long as I've had it).

But I can see it's more common for people to want to just dive in without all that research. LJ can be intimidating at first.

However, Blogger/Blogspot is nowhere near as good for interaction. I've found comments are not regularly emailed, and comments-to-comments aren't emailed at all ... it's practically impossible to actually hold a real interactive conversation there, whereas it's so easy to do on LJ. To me, Blogger seems far more like a "pulpit," but I'm looking for ongoing interaction with people!