Sub Rosa

Not that I pay particular attention to the LJ stats, but I have seen my position slide from within the top 400 to a lowly 758 in a very short period of time.  Zut Alors!!! I realised now that it is not JUST purely based on readership, but also on multiple postings and continual checking etc and contributing to various forums. Such is the weakness of my vanity, but I am really enjoying space away from the PC right now.

Plus side::: for some reason there has been a surge of interest in my Wordpress page.  I set it up during my FdA English Studies 'New Tech' module and was largely redundant from thereon in.  Until recently, that is.  I decided to reboot it as a literary resource hub, always citing the sources and forwarding people on to the original articles.  I am pleased to say that my stats board (which had been despressingly western) has now started to light up with views from other places.  Uraguay, Japan, Tunisia.  Pleased as Punch.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

So the old-style blog website has been jettisoned and the new online diarist has gone over to the flexible, user-friendly sites of Instagram et al. They haven’t disappeared totally – just reappeared in a different format. And I like these new forums, where you can have your own online scrapbook.  Nothing wrong with a beautiful pic, with a well-captioned sound-bite.  It is still creative after all. I must admit, before the dawn of digital photos, the blog forums were alive and kicking with their debates.  Along with this has seen the arrival of Fanfics, which are posted by blogsters who write imagined stories inspired by established genres. A lot of them are pretty good too - so we can't say that creativity is dead, though I must admit I have seen a cull of online friends on here - most of which I catch up with on FB in any case.

Could the old-style blog sites like LJ chase their shiny new competitors and change their format, or indeed should they?  I have thought about leaving LiveJournal for a while, specifically because of the dearth of bloggers, only to stay and recently have a form of renaissance. I have dickered around with other blogs such as Dreamwidth, Blogspot etc - I have seemingly got a small following on Wordpress now, so if LJ did sink without trace, I have at least another platform to launch myself from.  Many, who are looking for a journalistic/self-publishing angle to their lives have followed suit.