I do somewhat agree with the idea that LJ is not easiest to use, but I don't think it's the hardest to use, either. I thought most of the stuff I saw when I first joined was fairly intuitive (i.e., friending, memories, using the LJseek button, etc.). I'd put it somewhere in the middle as far as difficulty of use for networking sites.
Now, let me be honest: My experiences are somewhat scattered. When blogging first, first was getting started as an app, but before you had a critical mass of people online who were doing it, I tried Blogger (pre-Google buy-out) and one other (the name escapes me). I also took a taste of MySpace roughly around the time I got this LJ (GAH! Run away!). Currently, the networking sites I use are LJ, and LJ-like sites (as in they use the old LJ code) GreatestJournal and JournalFen. The other networking sites are Vox (good for multi-media, not very flexible for anything else) and LastFM (which allows blogging even though that's not the feature I use and is specifically designed for one purpose).
What I like about LJ is it's flexibility. I can go in, grab a basic template, and then tweak it (colors, pixel size, link text, sizes of sidebars and main posting, etc.) fairly easily. Or at least I think so.
I wonder how much of it might be a "generational" thing. I was banging around the Internet when it was Windows 3.1 and no WWW, so reading FAQs is something I do automatically. If I want to do something, I go check the FAQ. On that front, I think LJs FAQ is actually pretty good and easy to follow. The problem is finding the FAQ since there's no direct link to it with Horizon. You kind of have to dig a little to find it which is a pain in the ass. So I can't blame people when they actually don't know how to do something like an LJ-cut or an LJ name. However, there's no getting around that a lot of people won't read the FAQ to figure out how to do something, and right there is a problem (admittedly).
But Vox? Definitely not the way to go. I, for one, don't love the ads. I manage to screen quite a lot of them because I've got Firefox, but I still get the "Amazon recommends" links which drives me batshit insane. I'm willing to pay to make those ads go away.
As for searching, I agree the LJ search interface sucks the big one. The way around that is to go to LJSeek (via the Spyglass icon on the User Info page), change the parameters from searching just your LJ to searching all, and type in the search terms. The drawback is that if someone doesn't allow Spiders on their LJ (even if they don't friendslock their LJ), they're "invisible" to LJSeek, so no. It's not as good a solution as improving the internal LJ search interface. I'm not sure if allowing Spiders is an opt-in or opt-out (I think it's opt-in), but I do know that an awful lot of people don't allow Spiders. What that percentage is, I can't tell you.
My biggest complaint with LJ is that it's difficult to find out what all the features actually are. If you're not a FAQ whore like me (and even then I check when I'm trying to find out what I can and can't do), or if you don't belong to news, or if you're not willing to play around with your settings, finding out the features is an impossible task. So, yeah, that definitely could use some work.
no subject
Now, let me be honest: My experiences are somewhat scattered. When blogging first, first was getting started as an app, but before you had a critical mass of people online who were doing it, I tried Blogger (pre-Google buy-out) and one other (the name escapes me). I also took a taste of MySpace roughly around the time I got this LJ (GAH! Run away!). Currently, the networking sites I use are LJ, and LJ-like sites (as in they use the old LJ code) GreatestJournal and JournalFen. The other networking sites are Vox (good for multi-media, not very flexible for anything else) and LastFM (which allows blogging even though that's not the feature I use and is specifically designed for one purpose).
What I like about LJ is it's flexibility. I can go in, grab a basic template, and then tweak it (colors, pixel size, link text, sizes of sidebars and main posting, etc.) fairly easily. Or at least I think so.
I wonder how much of it might be a "generational" thing. I was banging around the Internet when it was Windows 3.1 and no WWW, so reading FAQs is something I do automatically. If I want to do something, I go check the FAQ. On that front, I think LJs FAQ is actually pretty good and easy to follow. The problem is finding the FAQ since there's no direct link to it with Horizon. You kind of have to dig a little to find it which is a pain in the ass. So I can't blame people when they actually don't know how to do something like an LJ-cut or an LJ name. However, there's no getting around that a lot of people won't read the FAQ to figure out how to do something, and right there is a problem (admittedly).
But Vox? Definitely not the way to go. I, for one, don't love the ads. I manage to screen quite a lot of them because I've got Firefox, but I still get the "Amazon recommends" links which drives me batshit insane. I'm willing to pay to make those ads go away.
As for searching, I agree the LJ search interface sucks the big one. The way around that is to go to LJSeek (via the Spyglass icon on the User Info page), change the parameters from searching just your LJ to searching all, and type in the search terms. The drawback is that if someone doesn't allow Spiders on their LJ (even if they don't friendslock their LJ), they're "invisible" to LJSeek, so no. It's not as good a solution as improving the internal LJ search interface. I'm not sure if allowing Spiders is an opt-in or opt-out (I think it's opt-in), but I do know that an awful lot of people don't allow Spiders. What that percentage is, I can't tell you.
My biggest complaint with LJ is that it's difficult to find out what all the features actually are. If you're not a FAQ whore like me (and even then I check when I'm trying to find out what I can and can't do), or if you don't belong to
I'm simply not sure how you'd fix it, though.