What is this Dreamwidth of which you speak?

[feliciakw]

So . . . is this another change in internet networking trends?

First, it was a mailing list (angus, I think). And I was happy there.

Then, it was YahooGroups. And that was good, too. Particularly since I could read it as a message board without having it come to my e-mail if I wanted.

Then it was LJ, and things became less centralized and more spread out and not so easily accessible, but I can record my own thoughts and activities, but still . . . not as focused . . .

Now there's talk of the Dreamwidth thing. Are people jumping ship from LJ for the next trend?

I mean, I'm already on Facebook (mostly for family), and whitemartyr caught me on a low day and utched me into joining Twitter. I don't need one more place I'm not gonna keep up with . . .

Btw, I'd still be interested in an easy way to download or save my LJ to my computer. Any suggestions?

Comments

[kerravonsen]

In your opinion, what makes it better?
I should do a proper long post about my reasons, but in short:
1. active development and improvements (Dreamwidth software is a fork of LJ software). Some features are already there, such as:
a) splitting the concept of "friends list" into "reading list" and "access list"
b) full import of LJ-based journals, including comments
c) support of OpenID, which means that people don't need to get a Dreamwidth account in order to comment in one's journal
2. responsive people running it; the ones running it also use it; they also encourage participation
3. No ads, ever.
4. A more sustainable business model than LJ. I'm getting more convinced that LJ's days are numbered; sure, it's still around now, but catering to one's advertisers rather than one's users is not a strategy for long-term success.

I'm on Mac OSX, so I'll have to see what's what.
I get the impression that things that work on Linux are likely to work on OSX (though may require extra stuff to be installed in order to get them working).