Even if LJ *isn't* the fannish hub of the universe, I think there are some very good reasons that it often feels like it is:
1) Unlike most mailinglists, boards etc. all the show and character specific comms are part of the larger LJ community - whereas, when I was using message boards at ezboard, I never felt "this board is part of ezboard", so it has a sense of scope.
2) Most boards are topic specific, and you go there looking for that one thing. LJ is all about many fandoms - and pimping new ones is almost a daily part of my flist. LJ is not a 'make a board and see if fans will come', LJ is about making more fans, so it's always getting *bigger*.
3) A lot people came to LJ from a lot of different corners fandoms, and brought parts of those spaces with them.
4) You don't need to have an LJ to be part of it for the people who do have them. Neil Gaiman does not have a livejournal, but because someone made a RSS feed of his blog, he shows up on people's flists and people comment on his posts are though he did. LJ consolidates, it brings in things going on off-site, so we *are* connect to whatever fandom is happening out there.
4b) People doing posts of random links from all over the internet connects LJ to the rest of fandom as well - because offsite things are being incorporated and discussed in LJ space.
5) Because one doesn't have to worry about coding a page or a website, the content and it's quality, I've found, is usually better. More time to make the thing, and then faster delivery to the fannish consumers. Plus, with the ease of comments function, constructive feedback and improvement of the product is quicker and more painless, and thus rightly giving the impression of the item being of yet better quality.
5b) You mention ff.net - horrid cesspool that is it - and I think it's telling that not only does LJ not *do* that, people actively makes fun of the conduct there. And in a way, we police ourselves by having fandom_wank (which, beiing on another blog service entirely, feels to me like it's impartial) there to poke fun.
Personally, I think 4 is most important, because it means LJ takes credit for things happening elsewhere, which both acknowledges an elsewhere and says 'but it's part of LJ anyway'. So, at the very least, LJ is a portal into fandom. But I'm more inclined to agree with you, because my fannish experience got immeasurably better when I came to LJ.
(Whoever said blogs are isolated - god yes. There is such a weird, constricted, talking into the vast emptiness of internet space about them. Even the ones hosted at blogspot).
no subject
1) Unlike most mailinglists, boards etc. all the show and character specific comms are part of the larger LJ community - whereas, when I was using message boards at ezboard, I never felt "this board is part of ezboard", so it has a sense of scope.
2) Most boards are topic specific, and you go there looking for that one thing. LJ is all about many fandoms - and pimping new ones is almost a daily part of my flist. LJ is not a 'make a board and see if fans will come', LJ is about making more fans, so it's always getting *bigger*.
3) A lot people came to LJ from a lot of different corners fandoms, and brought parts of those spaces with them.
4) You don't need to have an LJ to be part of it for the people who do have them. Neil Gaiman does not have a livejournal, but because someone made a RSS feed of his blog, he shows up on people's flists and people comment on his posts are though he did. LJ consolidates, it brings in things going on off-site, so we *are* connect to whatever fandom is happening out there.
4b) People doing posts of random links from all over the internet connects LJ to the rest of fandom as well - because offsite things are being incorporated and discussed in LJ space.
5) Because one doesn't have to worry about coding a page or a website, the content and it's quality, I've found, is usually better. More time to make the thing, and then faster delivery to the fannish consumers. Plus, with the ease of comments function, constructive feedback and improvement of the product is quicker and more painless, and thus rightly giving the impression of the item being of yet better quality.
5b) You mention ff.net - horrid cesspool that is it - and I think it's telling that not only does LJ not *do* that, people actively makes fun of the conduct there. And in a way, we police ourselves by having fandom_wank (which, beiing on another blog service entirely, feels to me like it's impartial) there to poke fun.
Personally, I think 4 is most important, because it means LJ takes credit for things happening elsewhere, which both acknowledges an elsewhere and says 'but it's part of LJ anyway'. So, at the very least, LJ is a portal into fandom. But I'm more inclined to agree with you, because my fannish experience got immeasurably better when I came to LJ.
(Whoever said blogs are isolated - god yes. There is such a weird, constricted, talking into the vast emptiness of internet space about them. Even the ones hosted at blogspot).