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I opened an account with Livejournal back at the start of February in order to give myself an online identity for other LJ users whose blogs I enjoy and occasionally post to.
I've always been a little dubious about the value of blogging - I just have better things to be doing with my time - but I have quite come to like the format of LJ and the platform's virtual community, the fact that most LJ users leave their blogs open does make it a community without hedges.
At the suggestion of an old friend I have however decided to also open a Facebook account as the site's popularity has ensured that a number of our mutual acquaintances also use this platform and it provides a useful means of communication.
I have to say I'm hugely unimpressed with the format, design and usability of the Facebook platform, if it's virtuality could be made bricks and mortar then it would be a community of bland little houses with high walls,no conversations between strangers at bus stops and rather trite weather-centric discourse between close neighbours.
Facebook generates insular, cliche-based community whereas LJ at least facilitates a more outward-looking, inter-tribal virtuality.
I'm writing this using Six Apart's cross-platform Facebook application Blog It, it will thus appear both in the grey commuter belt town of Facebook and simultaneously in the slightly pretentious but more cosmopolitan and much more interesting city-village community of Livejournal.