First Think, THEN Ink.

Can you still post directly from DW to LJ?

Answer: You can!

Hey!

This is my first ever cross post from my account at Dreamwidth, my alternate home on the internet. When I first got this Dreamwidth account, I did do a "First Post" on March 24, 2006, in what was my 5th Anniversary of my LJ. Unfortunately, that post was devoured when I transferred the entirety of my LiveJounal to Dreamwidth so that record is gone, but my journal is preserved, which I guess is the important thing.

It doesn't feel like almost 16 years of blogging. Or maybe it does. Or it really hasn't been because I took off months at a time when I wasn't writing here at all. But I do need a place to write, and there really isn't another like LJ er, DW.

I would make the following notes about the transfer.

1. It was extremely easy.

Despite going back through 2001 (and the handful of entries dated prior to that), it was just a couple of clicks to get the transfer set up and running.

2. It was successful.

Though I have heard that some people have dropped entries, my journal was transferred successfully without any issue - a feat that could be because I have a permanent account on LJ and now a paid account on DW. Though I also transferred a couple of free LJ accounts over (with a lot fewer entries, of course) and that seemed to have been fine.

3. All your LJ links remain LJ Links.

If you reference a LiveJournal post in one of your archived entries being transferred to DW, that reference will still point to the LJ link. That means, if you actually want to turn your DW journal into one that is self contained, you would have to go through and change those links manually to connect to the DW post you were referencing.

I expect that the same would be true going from DW to LJ. So that would be inconvenient, for certain... especially for me because I have linked pertinent entries to each other frequently and it would take a lot of patience to comb through all of the archive to adjust them all!

4. LJ user links remain unchanged.

If you have written the name of an LJ user in an entry, and that person had since changed their username, the original name still shows up in the DW post. I think that if you clicked the name, the link goes to a "non existent" user page. Again, this would have to be corrected on a post by post basis, manually.

5. When you edit your entry on DW, it automatically gets updated to your LJ!

I discovered this just now, but I had a typo on my DW entry and I noticed it when I was reading through the LJ version. I corrected it there, then found another on Dreamwidth. When I corrected THAT one, and came back to the LJ version, it was already fixed! Handy Dandy!

Meanwhile, are you on Dreamwidth? if you are, please add me to your journal there... I know a couple of folks like binaryorchid, jazzy_dave and ragdoll have done so already!

And yeah! On DW, to link someone's journal name in an entry, the term is

[user name=username] with the "[ ]" standing in for the "< >," just to get you up to speed on the HTML.

And if you have any other questions about transferring your journal to DW, let me know.

One of the banes of every actor's existence is to have to audition for roles. Whether it's for a stage role or for screen, big, small or computer, be it a hundred million dollar budget blockbuster or a local PSA, landing the part can feel like a mountain standing in your way.

Enter, Michael Kostroff. He is a well-seasoned and extremely successful actor in his own right, having done roles across all of television, ranging from heavy drama to soap operas, from kid sitcoms to nationally televised commercials, notable parts in films you definitely have seen, and a host of stage plays and musicals.

He has created what I feel is a revelation and, dare I say it, a revolutionary way of viewing the process of landing jobs in show biz for actors.

Michael Kostroff's Audition Psych 101 is a workshop intensive that will give you a different approach to how you handle the process and might just change your view in a way that even makes the experience fun! Click through to the Audition Psych website and check out some more details about it.

His next workshop is scheduled for Friday, August 19th in New York and I'm pleased to say I'm offering two actors comps to attend it!

( the fine print )

True confession: Sometimes I like to read through my mrkilborn journal. I have to admit, I did some of my better comedy writing just pretending to be a talk show host that no one remembers or cares about now for a bunch of anonymous people who were also pretending to be stars. It was ideal for what I was doing at the time. Maybe I could have put that sort of effort into writing a novel or screenplay or something. Probably. I probably should have! (I am now.)

( I am a bit proud (if I can use a Kilbornism from that era)... )

Credit this one to dabroots who posted a piece titled: "We are not perky, here at Live Journal." The upshot is facebook is for the happy commentary and anything considered a "downer" there is quickly criticized. And that's not the flavor of LJ.

My quickie comment back was: I like to think we're "real" here at LiveJournal. Which, of course, means perky when that's appropriate, but basically not because it rarely is.

But it's a bit more than that, which is how this thinkpost came to be!

( Of course, if you're looking at Facebook... )

Maybe I should post these statements to a public account, like my spaceagers board. But tamar is here and can read, and perhaps she can either fill in the people she encounters who might be interested, or send feedback here based on what she's heard from them, if anything. Or she'll suggest a public posting if she thinks it's worth it?

In Promoting LiveJournal - Step Two, I was looking at the basic mechanics of the current site and the userbase that is negotiating it.

Really, there could be an incentive program for current members bringing people to/back to LJ. How many people would you nudge to get 200 additional user icons? How many more sign ups could there be? Don't you want to send some more virtual gifts or get extra LJ Tokens?

Similarly to having celebrities on the site, having active LJ users that attract more people here is a program that could prove positive, overall. Again, how it is handled is both the trickiest part and the most important one.

( But, perhaps, the most crucial issue... )

ravenfeather asked me a pointed question: So, how would YOU promote LJ?

I think it's a great question, because it allows me to examine the elements that make LiveJournal the best social media platform of them all and finding the threads that could lead people back here again.

I think you have begin by looking at the history of the other social media sites, look at what they offer(ed) and compare that to what LiveJournal can deliver.

( MySpace was the original... )

Well, LiveJournal is now perfectly safe. A couple years back, we weren't so sure about that, when the people of SixApart were doing whatever it was they were doing and people were scrambling to archive their LJs. Remember that? We all were in a state of borderline panic about losing all of our writings and comments.

But now, it seems, the threat has taken a new form. People just don't read or write here the way they used to do. It seems as if Twitter has taken over the World Wide Web in a way that LJ never could have done, and of course Facebook has exploded in the time since those 6A days occurred. What really happened?

Twitter is easy. 140 characters and you can "make a post." For people who don't consider themselves "writers," it's a handy way to do something like LJ, without needing to say much. Not that you couldn't have just written your hundred forty right in your journal here! But maybe people would have found it odd to have adopted a "self-censored" approach to LJ.

Facebook has that "What's On Your Mind" headline, which is pretty much like the tweet posts, so there's that attraction. And suddenly, everyone you know from everywhere in the world has a Facebook account, so there's the lure of finding people you haven't spoken to in years, all right there. People that I never want to see or hear from again? Right there.

Twitter has the illusion of celebrity. When I interviewed marta for talk_show back in October of last year, she noted that the Яussian version of LiveJournal was laden with celebrities in their country, and that their journals were often used as source material for stories on their newscasts!

Apparently, that's what Twitter has become, here.

I mean, I guess people are really starved for star interaction, but the truth is you aren't getting any on twitter. When you see someone like Demi Moore... who has well over 1.5 Million people following her every tweet, yet she follows less than 100 people back... that's not going to bring you the entertainment jolt you really want... unless you think that yelling at the celebs on the red carpet, while you're across the street and facing away from them will get you their attention.

Recently popstar all but announced that she was going to give up her LJ to just use Facebook and Twitter and that she wasn't really sure how people were using LiveJournal anymore. My response to her (in part) was:

I have a perm account, so I will be here permanently, or until they dismantle the internet or LiveJournal, whichever comes first.

I see twitter as eroding LJ. Ultimately, as a writer, twitter leaves me feeling a bit depressed, like coming down from a junk food high. Yeah, it felt great at the time, but later, it's sorta empty. The substance, the nutrients and vitamins I seek are still (potentially) on LJ. The people I selected for my friendslist are the people who are inspiring and worthwhile. They're the people I want to read and hear about, because they have something to say!

And that's what I wanted to say to you. You are on my list because you are interesting to me. I may not always comment to what you say. I may not always see every entry when you post it and I may not always write something that you find worthwhile, but the point is, LJ is what we make it, and if everyone leaves, then it's just an empty place.

I'm not sure where twitter will go. The guys who founded it have made it clear they haven't made any money from it so how will this proceed? Will they get all their celeb users to pony up some cash? Because, really, that's why many of the twitter users joined!

But the question now is, will LJ be a dinosaur, or will it continue to be a vibrant and viable place to interact with people, to follow life stories, to share the triumphs and tragedies... It doesn't seem as imminent as when 6A was manipulating everything in their efforts to commercialize LJ for its own purposes, but in a way, isn't this at least as big a threat as that?