This is fascinating

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

It's like...BLOGGING blogging. Tumblr is what happens when every form of social media interaction build a city together. You can explore it forever, find niche shops and wild clubs and cliquish parties, stay an anonymous people-watcher forever or put yourself out there and find best friends for life. The crowds are always shifting; you don't know who you'll run into, who's watching you, who'll jump in on your conversation--you could get lucky or very unlucky. It's an endless metropolis.

This feels more like a college campus. We know who's here, more or less, and who’s in our clubs and classes, and where to find the literary arguments and the theater kids' hangouts, and we're sitting around each others' dorm rooms, talking about our feelings and the things we like. I like it.

Comments

[write_out]

Yes!! It's kind of nice, isn't it? Like taking a much needed break.

[pagimag]

I love your analogy, but I think this is scary. For someone like me who is more comfortable lurking, tumblr has always flooded me with interesting things without needing too much interaction. Which of course has left me rather on the outskirts of everything.
So this is me forcing myself to interact ;) and hopefully build more relations to all the people I've followed and reblogged but haven't dared to say a word to. Otherwise I guess I would end up like I would on a real life campus, alone in a quiet corner and missing out on all the fun things.

[mirawonderfulstar]

This is such an apt comparison!!

I'm hollering!!

[sanguinity]

Dreamwidth really is a nice place for a chat. You *can* chat one-to-one on tumblr, but it's hard to have a conversation with a small group of friends there, whereas it's much easier here.

And you know what? I *like* having conversations with small groups of friends. There's been a lot less of it since people decamped for tumblr, and I've been enjoying the increased activity here these past days. :-)

...and very selfishly, I can't help but think it'll be good for holmestice, too, to have new people coming in to Dreamwidth. One less hurdle to participating if one is already here, yes?

[yaycoffee]

Perfect analogy! I like the community aspect of this kind of format so much!

[003_5]

awww, that such a nice way to put it! and accurate too!

[dogandmonkeyshow]

DW (and LJ and IJ before it) are Tumblr without the algorithms throwing content at you: you have to find the content yourself. Which is work, yes, but also means you have a lot more control over what you see and who sees you. There are pros and cons to each. I think Tumblr is easier when you're new to a fandom; the interactions are shallow but broad, which is what you want until you find your tribe(s). But DW is much better for real conversations rather than standing on a rooftop and shouting to all and sundry. Assuming that's what you want, of course.

Welcome to online fandom v2.0.

[alchemistdoctor]

I think there's a little more responsibility on both DW and PF about your content. Where it goes and who sees it is more under your control because of lack of reblogs.
But that also means if you post something terrible you can't blame it on being a reblog. It's your content. So it's more personal.

[booksandgalaxies]

Since I mainly make text posts the switch shouldn't be too hard. The question is how many people will come over to DW.

[tripleransom]

Well, see, I am one of those dinosaurs who had an LJ account since - oh, 2000, I think. Tumblr always just seemed so random to me. I could never find anything again, never follow up on anything, never knew when a post was made. It was like Brownian motion - molecules encountering each other in a random sequence. I had actual friends on LJ, actual conversations, and followed peoples' lives - or at least the parts of them they wanted to reveal. So, this is the format that seems comfortable to me. I hope you like it here.

[johnlockismyreligion]

Yes, that's actually very nice ^_^