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The LiveJournal logo.

LiveJournal has come a long way since its birth in 1999. I remember when access to LJ was so exclusive that you needed a friend to send you an “invite code” just so you could sign up. Back then, two of my friends expressed their wants for a LiveJournal account, and so I sought out invites, but to no avail. I just so happened to be in the Christmas spirit, so I eventually purchased two accounts for them. The funny thing is that LiveJournal opened account signups to the public weeks later.

Any nitpicky blogger will have searched through several blogging sites to find that perfect journalling site to use. Xanga, Blogger, Blogdrive—there are plenty to choose from. But many of my friends are so entranced by LiveJournal’s allure that if it’s not LJ or an LJ clone, they won’t use it.

Knowing that LiveJournal’s free accounts have much less features than many of the other blogging sites out there, I searched for better, more feature-rich alternatives for the same price (which is no price at all). The site I found was GreatestJournal, a blogging site much like LiveJournal’s, only it happens to be red in color. In case you didn’t know, the code used to run LiveJournal is Open Source, meaning it’s free for everyone to use. GreatestJournal happens to run on the same code as LiveJournal, but it’s completely free. No paid accounts, no limited access—every account is as equal and powerful as the next.

GreatestJournal seemed to have the upper hand against LiveJournal for the longest time, but then something changed. Ever since Six Apart bought out the company owning LiveJournal, LiveJournal has been rapidly evolving, adding new features every few weeks. LiveJournal now has a new chat feature, dozens of new layout themes, and an ad-based option that allows non-paying users to have all the perks that paid users have (if they choose to have the small burden of ads on their journals’ pages). Two of my favorite LJ upgrades have been the auto-save feature when writing posts—so you don’t lose an entire journal entry when the power goes out—and the new standards-compliant website redesign. LJ has been doing some wonderful things with JavaScript and XHTML.

GreatestJournal, on the other hand, continues to use the same outdated LiveJournal source code that it had borrowed during its inception. The sluggish HTML, the limited functionality, the outdated theme editor—GreatestJournal’s features are now an unsightly reminder of what LiveJournal used to be, and it shows just how much LiveJournal has improved over the years.

I used to recommend GreatestJournal to my friends because of its stance on providing unlimited free access to all its users. But it seems that LiveJournal now has the better hand, most likely due to its nurturing by Six Apart.

So, in case you’re looking for a blog, and you feel like using an LJ-like interface, don’t settle for the outdated clones; go with the real deal.

For more info on LiveJournal, check out its Wikipedia article, or simply visit the site.