Pillowfort

[orangerful]

Because I am a sucker for any new kind of social media that wishes to recapture the hey-day of Livejournal, I am now on Pillowfort (thank you yourlibrarian!)

But I have no friends to follow on there. I've joined a few communities, but if you happen to be on there, please add me. You know my name. :)

And if you are on there already, any suggestions for good active communities?

Comments

[angrboda]

Can you explain to me what this actually is? I'm sort of under the impression that it's primarily for memes and such, but I'm guessing that's probably inaccurate? What does it do that DW doesn't?

[orangerful]

I'm not really sure yet? It is in Beta right now but it does look like a combination of DW/LJ/Tumblr -- I'm not really sure what it does that those sites don't already do. I think they are just trying to create a safer version of Tumblr, with the controls of LJ/DW?

I'm really new to it so it is hard to say anything, right now the only active community I have found is the Beta testers. :|

[yourlibrarian]

I'd suggest leaving Beta Testers unless you'd like to stay up to date on bugs and feature requests (anything new will be announced on the Staff account anyway). Instead, communities to join include:

https://pillowfort.io/community/FandomOlds
https://pillowfort.io/community/PillowfortDiscussions

and for general activity

https://pillowfort.io/community/Active_Users

Most communities are indeed quiet currently, though no more so than most communities here. I can't recall if you're interested in Marvel but that community gets regular posts.

Besides those communities though it's best to look and see who shares your interests and start following them. I'm only subscribed to 50 people but 20 of them post every day and there's plenty to keep up on.

For fun I'd also recommend poking around https://pillowfort.io/community/BlanketBoxBox which is where the PF version of memes can be found. You'll likely see a number of these circulating.

[orangerful]

THANK YOU! Oh my gosh, I was feeling kind of lost, not sure where to start. I added some communities but most of them are pretty silent. This should at least help me find some like-minded people.

[yourlibrarian]

No problem -- feel free to ping me anytime you have a question. I've been using it daily for a few months now and have already seen some changes happen in terms of features, so it's helpful to have someone around to say "Hey can this be done?" to :)

[yourlibrarian]

Images. They make it much, much easier to post visual content as well as to share content across the site.

The site blends features found at both DW and Tumblr although not in the same way. In various cases the plan is to include more of the features fans find useful in managing their content and their reading experience. For example, blacklisted terms are possible and posting only to followers is possible. In the future, there may also be filters.

Similarly, content can be reblogged but it always remains under the control of the original poster. They can change their settings to allow reblogs (and comments) or not. Regardless of where the content is reblogged all links redirect to the original post. So a reblog doesn't mean it gets copied, it means that a full version of it can be linked to from another account.

So let's say the original poster -- or someone else -- reblogs their post about ducks to the Ducks community, anyone at that community can see the post. But when they comment to it, all likes and comments get made on the original post at the creator's account.

If we did that here at DW by crossposting, we would be creating a separate post at each community rather than having all those posts link bank into the original post at our own account.

[angrboda]

Okay, that... actually sounds kind of interesting. So it would be more suitable for fun things, like a book review or crafty progress pictures or this interesting idea someone just had, rather than personal private argh-the-dishwasher-is-borked-again stuff like DW often is. A positive sort of space, yes? That sort of distinction appeals to me.

I went and had a closer look with that demo user (excellent idea actually, rather than some sort of 'tour' that a lot of services does that doesn't actually answer any questions). I would hope the layout eventually would become at least a little bit customisable. :)

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, I think so. Of course, that's only because a lot of the people currently there are (desperately) looking for an alternative to Tumblr, and that site is not known for introspection. Plus the privacy settings are currently not as fine grained as here on Dreamwidth so I think people are less interested in posting personal things. But it's possible it might go in different directions.

Currently I've been posting mostly photographs because it is a pain to do that here, plus I have posted the very same photos over on Tumblr to crickets, whereas virtually everything I've posted there has gotten some kind of response. But I've also posted some meta and have seen a variety of conversations accumulating 30 or more responses, so many people are ready to talk too.

It's true that any kind of personalization is currently quite limited (my biggest problem with that is that communities have no "front page" at all, making it impossible to customize in any way). I have my doubts that it will change soon. However people are finding ways to use what's available -- see for example this account which followed the directions in this post. Even if you don't get elaborate you can make simple changes with a few clicks.

[angrboda]

I never got into tumblr in the first place so I can't really compare with that other than very general impressions. I did find it clunky and a unattractive with the way it would give a long list, four times the size of the content, about who else had shared it.

Anyway, I threw money at them, so we'll see! I figured even if I decided not to use it much, it's such a small amount it doesn't matter. You can barely even buy the cheapest bottle of plonk for that in this country :)

[yourlibrarian]

Feel free to follow me there if you'd like. Right now I'm finding it's not difficult to put together an active feed as long as one isn't trying to do it solely with fandom content. That will probably take a while to happen. (I'm definitely seeing it but not usually from my own fandoms or my own corner of it).

[angrboda]

Thanks, I will do that. 😊

ons. 12. sep. 2018 21.06 skrev yourlibrarian - DW Comment < dw_null@dreamwidth.org>:

[mythicgeek]

I added you! Same username as here. I need to start using mine more...

[orangerful]

Just spent an embarrassing amount of time clicking "follow" on your page only to realize I wasn't actually logged into Pillowfort LOL. Whoops! Got ya now though.

[mythicgeek]

DO YOU KNOW HOW OFTEN I HAVE DONE THAT?? Don't worry you're not alone XD