Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2009-05-01 05:44 am
azurelunatic) wrote2009-05-01 05:44 am
Entry tags:
Similarities and Differences between LiveJournal and Dreamwidth (that I have noticed so far)
So. LiveJournal. Dreamwidth. One of the things that's been striking me, looking around, is how some people are saying that LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are essentially the same, and other people are talking about how different they are. And from an essential functional perspective, they're both social media blogging/aggregation services going in different forks off the same original codebase, and share some of the same main features. Down in the details, though, if you're someone who cares about details and cares about them passionately, there are differences. Which service will suit you? Will both suit you? Will you ultimately just want to grab a copy of someone's working install code and run off to your own server? Only time will tell.
A list of things (largely technical features) that are being done differently (note: there are many things on that list that aren't covered in my run-down; go check it out if you haven't already.)
Similarity: LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are both social media blogging services, having the ability to publish both single-user and communal blogs, with exceedingly granular security features on each entry, a fairly powerful aggregator, with some social networking features.
Difference: LiveJournal was originally conceived and developed by a hobbyist in a dorm room. Dreamwidth was conceived and developed by owners who had experience with running a social media site.
Difference: LiveJournal has a large company owning it, based out of Russia, although LJ's local stuff is handled by the US-based LJ Inc. Dreamwidth is owned by two individuals, and is run out of Maryland.
Similarity: Much of the technical support for both sites is crowdsourced, and any user on either site is welcome to provide technical support for other users.
Difference: LiveJournal's technical support uses a very formal style, which can be seen positively as professional, or negatively as robotic. Dreamwidth's technical support uses a more natural style, which can be seen positively as human and accessible, or negatively as too casual.
Difference: LiveJournal's Frequently Asked Questions style has a level of formality similar to the support writing style, and FAQ entries are lengthy, containing a large amount of information about each feature, collected into one place. Dreamwidth's Frequently Asked Questions style is more casual, and FAQ entries are shorter, with a larger number of different entries on similar subjects. (Dreamwidth's FAQ is also still under heavy construction, while LiveJournal's FAQs are largely completed, but are updated periodically.)
Difference: LiveJournal is funded both by paid accounts purchased by users and by funds from advertisers. Dreamwidth is funded by paid accounts purchased by users.
Difference: LiveJournal's permanent accounts have extra features above and beyond what users making recurring payments may purchase. Dreamwidth's "seed" accounts have the same features as Premium Paid accounts.
Similarity: Any sale of a one-time payment account that is good for the life of the service trades the possibility that the owner of the account would continue to pay past the depreciation point of the one-time payment for the certainty of cash in hand now.
Difference: LiveJournal does not discount the possibility that there will be another permanent account sale in the future. Barring unforeseen circumstances, Dreamwidth explicitly plans that there will be no more seed account sales in the future.
Difference: LiveJournal's architecture encourages a unwritten social contract that to read meant to allow informational intimacy, and vice versa, even though there were existing methods to avoid this. Dreamwidth's architecture breaks this link, and it is yet to be seen what social norms will evolve around the reading/access model.
Similarity: Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are open-source software projects, to greater or lesser degrees.
Difference: LiveJournal's code is difficult to install and use out of the box, and several important functions are missing from the Open Source portions of the site. Dreamwidth's software is not yet all the way in the box, but is intended to be usable with only the Open Source bits.
Difference: LiveJournal is running production code, with the occasional small exception when it allows its Support volunteers to beta-test and find the inevitable errors in new code before releasing it into production. Dreamwidth is running beta code for all users, who are finding the inevitable errors in the new code.
Similarity: Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are for-profit businesses.
Similarity: Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are aimed at a general audience, LiveJournal implicitly by not using exclusive language, and Dreamwidth explicitly, by using inclusive language.
Difference: LiveJournal chooses, when such is brought to its attention, to impose further restrictions beyond those required by law upon the content on its servers, in part for keeping the 'www' subdomain at least at R-rated or under, ideally not over PG-14. Dreamwidth's policies deprecate restrictions other than those required by local law and sanity in the name of keeping things spam-free.
Difference: LiveJournal has operated under several different owners in its online tenure. Dreamwidth's ownership has not changed in its brief lifespan so far.
Difference: LiveJournal is a well-established service with history and reputation, and has managed to stay in existence now just over ten years. Dreamwidth is still in (open) beta testing, has only a few months of actual, active, non-hypothetical existence, and has only the reputation of its various and sundry members, supporters, and detractors.
Difference: LiveJournal has an official mascot, Frank the Goat, which is either pretty cool, or actually kind of cheesy, depending on your perspective (and how much you like chèvre). Dreamwidth has no official mascot, although there is some userbase support of sheep and paper bags; this is either refreshing or a bit disappointing depending on how much you like sheep (and paper bags).
Difference: LiveJournal, starting from the ground up, had to invent many of the tools it then used, without the luxury of being able to wait to design it properly. This led to much innovation, and also a certain number of shambling horrors of the deep. Dreamwidth inherited a certain number of shambling horrors of the deep, which it has been merrily ripping out and replacing, having the advantage of hindsight.
Complete Unknown: Your friends may be on Livejournal, on Dreamwidth, or both. They may be cross-posting, posting one place and directing comments onto the other, posting different things both places, or not posting anything at all.
There are more. There are always more. But that's a bit of what I've seen so far.
A list of things (largely technical features) that are being done differently (note: there are many things on that list that aren't covered in my run-down; go check it out if you haven't already.)
Similarity: LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are both social media blogging services, having the ability to publish both single-user and communal blogs, with exceedingly granular security features on each entry, a fairly powerful aggregator, with some social networking features.
Difference: LiveJournal was originally conceived and developed by a hobbyist in a dorm room. Dreamwidth was conceived and developed by owners who had experience with running a social media site.
Difference: LiveJournal has a large company owning it, based out of Russia, although LJ's local stuff is handled by the US-based LJ Inc. Dreamwidth is owned by two individuals, and is run out of Maryland.
Similarity: Much of the technical support for both sites is crowdsourced, and any user on either site is welcome to provide technical support for other users.
Difference: LiveJournal's technical support uses a very formal style, which can be seen positively as professional, or negatively as robotic. Dreamwidth's technical support uses a more natural style, which can be seen positively as human and accessible, or negatively as too casual.
Difference: LiveJournal's Frequently Asked Questions style has a level of formality similar to the support writing style, and FAQ entries are lengthy, containing a large amount of information about each feature, collected into one place. Dreamwidth's Frequently Asked Questions style is more casual, and FAQ entries are shorter, with a larger number of different entries on similar subjects. (Dreamwidth's FAQ is also still under heavy construction, while LiveJournal's FAQs are largely completed, but are updated periodically.)
Difference: LiveJournal is funded both by paid accounts purchased by users and by funds from advertisers. Dreamwidth is funded by paid accounts purchased by users.
Difference: LiveJournal's permanent accounts have extra features above and beyond what users making recurring payments may purchase. Dreamwidth's "seed" accounts have the same features as Premium Paid accounts.
Similarity: Any sale of a one-time payment account that is good for the life of the service trades the possibility that the owner of the account would continue to pay past the depreciation point of the one-time payment for the certainty of cash in hand now.
Difference: LiveJournal does not discount the possibility that there will be another permanent account sale in the future. Barring unforeseen circumstances, Dreamwidth explicitly plans that there will be no more seed account sales in the future.
Difference: LiveJournal's architecture encourages a unwritten social contract that to read meant to allow informational intimacy, and vice versa, even though there were existing methods to avoid this. Dreamwidth's architecture breaks this link, and it is yet to be seen what social norms will evolve around the reading/access model.
Similarity: Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are open-source software projects, to greater or lesser degrees.
Difference: LiveJournal's code is difficult to install and use out of the box, and several important functions are missing from the Open Source portions of the site. Dreamwidth's software is not yet all the way in the box, but is intended to be usable with only the Open Source bits.
Difference: LiveJournal is running production code, with the occasional small exception when it allows its Support volunteers to beta-test and find the inevitable errors in new code before releasing it into production. Dreamwidth is running beta code for all users, who are finding the inevitable errors in the new code.
Similarity: Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are for-profit businesses.
Similarity: Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are aimed at a general audience, LiveJournal implicitly by not using exclusive language, and Dreamwidth explicitly, by using inclusive language.
Difference: LiveJournal chooses, when such is brought to its attention, to impose further restrictions beyond those required by law upon the content on its servers, in part for keeping the 'www' subdomain at least at R-rated or under, ideally not over PG-14. Dreamwidth's policies deprecate restrictions other than those required by local law and sanity in the name of keeping things spam-free.
Difference: LiveJournal has operated under several different owners in its online tenure. Dreamwidth's ownership has not changed in its brief lifespan so far.
Difference: LiveJournal is a well-established service with history and reputation, and has managed to stay in existence now just over ten years. Dreamwidth is still in (open) beta testing, has only a few months of actual, active, non-hypothetical existence, and has only the reputation of its various and sundry members, supporters, and detractors.
Difference: LiveJournal has an official mascot, Frank the Goat, which is either pretty cool, or actually kind of cheesy, depending on your perspective (and how much you like chèvre). Dreamwidth has no official mascot, although there is some userbase support of sheep and paper bags; this is either refreshing or a bit disappointing depending on how much you like sheep (and paper bags).
Difference: LiveJournal, starting from the ground up, had to invent many of the tools it then used, without the luxury of being able to wait to design it properly. This led to much innovation, and also a certain number of shambling horrors of the deep. Dreamwidth inherited a certain number of shambling horrors of the deep, which it has been merrily ripping out and replacing, having the advantage of hindsight.
Complete Unknown: Your friends may be on Livejournal, on Dreamwidth, or both. They may be cross-posting, posting one place and directing comments onto the other, posting different things both places, or not posting anything at all.
There are more. There are always more. But that's a bit of what I've seen so far.
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there were also some things that i didn't really know. so thank you for posting this entry! i added it to my memories. :)
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Excellent post as always, Azure.
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great post!
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I'd like to see a feature that differentiates between lj user and dw user for crossposting purposes..
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This is true currently, but I believe the plan in the future, after launch, is to have it follow a model that's more similar to how LJ does it - hence why the main branch is named "production". There'll be a "staging" branch later too, which is where the beta stuff will be, and I imagine it'll be open to all users if they want to participate.
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Technical capabilities, still pretty similar.
History, still pretty much the same.
Ownership, still the same.
Technical support, still crowdsourced both places. Dreamwidth's technical support is largely in the hands of direct volunteer management, with three volunteers overseeing a larger pool of technical support volunteers, while LiveJournal has a single employee in the same general role of oversight. (See: smaller staff at Dreamwidth.)
Style of technical support: no real changes there.
Writing style of documentation: no change.
I'm not sure whether it counts as a similarity or a difference now, but LiveJournal's FAQs are still a work in progress; Dreamwidth's are now more comprehensive but still need some blanks filled in, and updating here and there. I think it's a similarity, and that's changed.
LiveJournal has recently reached out into affiliate links as a possible revenue stream, in addition to advertising. LiveJournal now allows paid users to sign up with Google AdSense to place advertisements on their own journals. LiveJournal has rolled the OhNoTheyDidn't community into management by LiveJournal staff, by dint of negotiating with the community and hiring one of the existing maintainers on as LiveJournal staff; ONTD will be getting ads (or already has them; I'm not there very often). Dreamwidth has branched out into selling swag on Zazzle, including the hilarious Ridiculously Overpriced Fundraising Sticker. Both sites still sell paid accounts.
No change to account levels.
Due to Dreamwidth's unforeseen cash-flow problems caused by all credit card payments being completely not possible for a few months, the owners are considering another Seed account sale, but would prefer to raise money other ways.
LiveJournal's social norms around friending remain the same. Dreamwidth's social norms around reading and access are working themselves out, and seem to be doing so with a minimum of drama, though perhaps that's from self-selecting more low-drama users? Dunno.
Dreamwidth is far closer to live, and there are at least two websites (can't recall them off the top of my head) which are in fact running a clone of Dreamwidth's code rather than a clone of LiveJournal's. (!!)
Dreamwidth is still all-beta; LiveJournal has recently recruited some more beta testers, but still works with a live site and a beta site for testers.
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LiveJournal seems to be taking on fewer of the patches that Dreamwidth developed; there's far less collaboration than there was. Given that LiveJournal didn't appear to be taking any patches from external developers for some years, this looks like reverting back to previous behavior rather than a huge change. Dreamwidth has been actively training new developers, and devoting significant resources to reviewing code submissions and helping new developers level up. Dreamwidth has been speaking at FLOSS technical conferences as a result of this.
LiveJournal has had a few scandals in the past year, mostly generated by internal actions and user reactions to same. Dreamwidth has not had comparable internally-caused incidents that I noticed.
Dreamwidth has come under attack by pressure groups criticizing the site for allowing some actually pretty gnarly but legal content; these groups communicated with PayPal and Google Checkout, which both then decided to disallow Dreamwidth from using their services when Dreamwidth declined to remove (or cause to be removed) the content. LiveJournal has not had comparable externally-caused incidents that I noticed.
Both Dreamwidth and LiveJournal are still for-profit businesses.
LiveJournal has turned 11 now?! Wow. It's had some growing pains; Michael Jackson's death took a toll on it, they discovered some inefficiencies in the code, and they had some slowness prior to some pretty significant upgrades. Dreamwidth has been in open beta for about a year now, and has established itself as having pretty stable service (not much downtime, and quick communications when things are funky). There were some drive failures, but things failed over onto the backup as planned.
LiveJournal has tried to stay classy when Dreamwidth evangelists evangelize in places like news posts; Dreamwidth's owners have more than once had to Say Things to people trying to bring their friends over about being helpful and not obnoxious.
LiveJournal users have not had cause to complain about lack of interesting content on LiveJournal. Dreamwidth users have been heard to complain that there is a lack of content on Dreamwidth, particularly in communities.
Dreamwidth users have commented positively that Dreamwidth feels smaller and friendlier compared to LiveJournal's size and the weird looks you get sometimes when you stop into a stranger's journal and start up a conversation.
Non-fannish Dreamwidth users have complained that sometimes, due to the number of fans who use Dreamwidth, that it's hard to have a good solid conversation about something else -- not that the fans interrupt, but that a different conversation is hard to find.
LiveJournal users have complained that some of the people they used to know on LiveJournal are moving away; Dreamwidth users have complained that people they used to know on LiveJournal are not moving with them.
LiveJournal has a serial story about the adventures of its mascot, Frank the Goat, in its news entries. Dreamwidth has lots of little sheep icons, and I translated the dreamsheep to fiber and presented the owners with Dreamsheep Alpha on Friday.
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LiveJournal still has image hosting; Mark's started work on the beginnings of that.
LiveJournal has more text messaging features; Dreamwidth may not ever have this, given that text messaging is expeeeeensive.
Dreamwidth has icon keyword renaming, so you can rename a given keyword and have it show up on past entries and comments where you used that icon.
Dreamwidth will have tag merge as of the next code push. (I know of an open ticket for tag merge in LiveJournal as well.)
Dreamwidth of course still has personal journal imports.
Dreamwidth now has limited community imports.
Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth now allow Google Analytics.
Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth have site search. Dreamwidth's single-journal search allows one to search restricted-access entries to which one has access, on the journals of others and your own journal.
Paid Dreamwidth users may include tag, or not-tag, as an item in their reading page filters. (Like, all of someone's entries except for their entries tagged 'twitter', or only their entries tagged 'fic'.)
"Sticky" entry on Dreamwidth.
Maintainers-only security for community entries on Dreamwidth.
Four options (male, female, other, unspecified) for gender on Dreamwidth; three options (male, female, other/unspecified) for gender on Livejournal ("other" was added to the previous "unspecified" option during the past year).
Dreamwidth allows OpenID accounts to do more things (notably, join communities) than LiveJournal does; LiveJournal's rights for OpenID accounts did increase under Tupshin's loving care.
Both sites got rid of that heartbreaking "this page is too old, we'll ditch your comment" error; LiveJournal took up Dreamwidth's patch. I bawled real tears of joy and relief when this happened.
Dreamwidth implemented my link-to-this-user module suggestion. <3
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LiveJournal has implemented the long-awaited a la carte icons, not without some bobbles. (Dreamwidth has no plans for same.)
LiveJournal has new site-integrated chat.
LiveJournal has started putting up different user-submitted banners.
LiveJournal has been using interesting different user-heads (remember the Santa hats? Those were really fun. I wrote to Nokia to give them love.)
LiveJournal and Dreamwidth both re-organized navigation based on sanity; Dreamwidth's involved a many-user card sort.
LiveJournal has a new Mobile page (with some things not working as planned); Dreamwidth has a new mobile developer, and you're looking at his lovely #1 beta tester. (Feel my utter overjoy.)
LiveJournal changed tag selection interface, which I actually like quite a bit; not everyone feels the love as much as I do.
LiveJournal separated email and inbox notifications for ESN subscriptions except for PMs. WOO FUCKING HOO!!!!!!!!! (Currently available only as "the horrible hack" on Dreamwidth.)
Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth legitimized "the magic subscription" (maintainers/admins can get notified for any comment anywhere in their community). (There was previously a browser hack that would force the subscription, since there was a hook for it.)
LiveJournal redid the subscription listing page some, and AJAX saves the day once again, you can kill a subscription without a whole page reload. (Not sure if Dw does that yet.) It doesn't fail back to checkboxes yet, I believe, though.
LiveJournal has internal journal statistics, and My Guests.
LiveJournal has some anti-spam features, like separate settings for comments and entries with links.
LiveJournal made it possible to remove the first-validated email address on an account \o/ omfg we've wanted this FOR FUCKING EVER THANK FUCK
LiveJournal has 'ban everywhere', if you maintain more than one comm and want a certain jackass banned from all of them.
LiveJournal has "notes" for users; in the immortal words of djdance, "I want to describe it shortly."
LiveJournal has better geolocation features now, featuring, um, I wrote the faq, I should know this, and Google Gears, and somebody else in certain Cyrillic territories.
Both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth have made some RTE upgrades.
LiveJournal updates the entry time to the current time unless the time is manually edited or opened to manually edit; Dreamwidth has a button to update the entry time to the current time.
LiveJournal has further restricted the allowed activities of accounts with unvalidated email addresses to fight spam.
LiveJournal has made various & sundry improvements to Writer's Block.
LiveJournal has made various increases to limits.
LiveJournal got hit by a crossdomain scripting exploit, and got a patch to fix the hell out of it in very quick timing. V. impressed.
Both sites have tagging permission upgrades, finer-grained. (Both sites do allow custom groups in comms to edit tags, you just have to create the custom group first.)
LiveJournal lists the number of comments to the entry on the entry itself; Dreamwidth shows it in an image when crossposting.
LiveJournal upgraded its Jabber server.
LiveJournal upgraded little details on polls.
Dreamwidth patched an absolute positioning in comments exploit, and LJ also took this up.
LiveJournal had pingbacks enabled for a while.
LiveJournal has an option to delete all comments by a certain user in an entry (useful for spammers).
LiveJournal community maintainers can cancel outstanding invitations.
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Was that the “upgrade” that involved replacing the Jabber server that Brad made by gluing together like half of CPAN on a whim (http://www.danga.com/djabberd/) with EJabberd (http://www.ejabberd.im/)? I can never remember which year random LJ stuff happened in, and somewhere there got to be a lot of them.
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