Foafing

[barondave]

How do people use Live Journal? I'm still comparitively new here (since Minicon), and can see a rather wildly divergent range of styles and activity. But I just don't understand how someone can have 200+ Friends and possibly keep up. Maybe I'm just being shy and unassuming...

I will often duck into the journals of people who have friended me. That way I can read a chunk of personalzine info in a row. Since I can't figure out who many LJ users are by their LJ name -- and sometimes can't figure out who they are from their LJ user info -- I like to go foafing. I go look at the the LJ entry of a Friend Of A Friend and sometimes keep on linking. Does anyone else do this?

A few days ago I started out with the mild intention of Friending someone who I didn't know, way down the foaf chain. Never did quite that, but I discovered how wide the LJ community is. I still don't want lots of Friends, but it would be nice to have a list to check on now and then. I suppose I could just write them down...

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

People with large Friends lists either skim like mad, or they use filters to just keep up on a subset of their Friends list.

We do both.

K.

[qrssama.livejournal.com]

I've foaf'ed, which is how I ended up reading your journal (through someone else, forgot who). I use bookmarks in Opera to keep track of people I just want to check on occasionally without friending.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I wondered where you came from (and who you are). We have mutual friends and I like your interests. Welcome!

I looked at filters, but they just seem to set up Subgroups; useful but at the moment my list is small enough that I don't have to bother. I like your idea of bookmarks; just as easy in Safari as Opera.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I often skim through the entries on the Friends page, reading more carefully when I strike topics of particular interest, and I'll also go through and check in on particular friends to make sure I didn't miss interesting entries. I've added a lot of friends by foafing!

usernames

[mmagidow.livejournal.com]

It really irks me that usernames are so cryptic. If someone is a FOAF it would be nice to figure out if I know the person writing. It isn't necessary to be so dang inscrutable. If people don't want to reveal who they are, why are they on livejoural in the first place?