Skip to main content

Remember LiveJournal? The blogging site from 1999 still has fans

Is LiveJournal still part of your daily Web-browsing routine? At one point, it might have been. According to Bitly’s infographic, which illustrates several social networks’ first-quarter results, the usual Internet hangouts such as Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook are experiencing growth. Surprisingly, LiveJournal still has a significant Web presence despite being eclipsed by the other four sites in traffic.

LiveJournal, one of the oldest blog communities on the Internet, was launched by Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999 as a way to keep his friends updated on what he was doing. The site has since been eclipsed by new social media heavyweights such as Facebook and Twitter, which made communities like LiveJournal a less popular hangout spot on the Internet. However, LiveJournal still ranks highly on Alexa analytics rating, and the Russian edition of the website is actually growing in popularity. LiveJournal reported 51.8 percent overall growth last quarter. Surprisingly, desktop growth (61.5 percent) greatly outpaced tablet (26.7 percent) and mobile growth (23.9 percent), showing that it is still going strong among desktop users.

Recommended Videos

Tumblr, Yahoo’s microblogging service with 474 million monthly users, reported a whopping 128.6 percent growth in traffic over last year. Most of Tumblr’s growth has also come from desktop users (193 percent), at a time when most social media websites are increasing in mobile traffic.

WordPress, another popular blogging website, is one of Tumblr’s biggest competitors. According to World Wide Web Technology Surveys (W3Techs), WordPress is used by many low-traffic websites, where the majority of personal blogs fall. According to Alexa, Tumblr ranks 35th worldwide while WordPress is 36th. The main difference is that WordPress is also used as a content management system by several businesses, while Tumblr is more for everyday users.

Reddit’s Q1 growth can be attributed to users’ preference for access the Internet with mobile devices. Reddit reported 94.4 percent growth in traffic from mobile and 86.6 percent from tablets. According to AdWeek, certain viral events such as “The Fappening,” a leak of nude pics of celebrities, could have also contributed to the growth. Reddit had 168 million unique visitors in 2015, and the ability for anyone to create “subreddits” on just about any topic makes users flock to Reddit not only for community, but also for news and education.

Facebook’s desktop audience has dropped 3.3 percent, while experiencing growth among smartphone (26.8 percent) and tablet users (14.9 percent). Twitter measured small gains in both mobile and desktop users. These numbers should show you which communities people are still flocking to and what they are using to visit them — at least, for now.

Jose Alvarez
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Introduced to tech at a young age, Jose has grown attached to video games in particular. He has covered topics such as…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more