Livejournal, to me, was a fusion of three things: a simple HTML editor (aka posts) + a time-sorted view and access controls + discoverability through your network.
The things that made it different than Facebook were (1) that they didn't screw around with your feed (it was your friends' posts, sorted by date), (2) that discoverability and networking was user intentional and exploratory (pull, rather than suggested / push), & (3) access controls were simple, understandable, and obeyed user intent.
I enjoyed LJ for a few years (my first blog, 2005-2008). Wrote a good deal about startups that I explored as a user in that period (this was the APG era, where APG stands for After Paul Graham, meaning after he wrote his early influential essays about startups and his launching YC - called Startup School at the time, IIRC) and other software topics.
Interestingly, some years later, I mentioned the same point, on my next blog or on Twitter, and then suddenly my old blog became accessible again (it was not, for a while, after the above-linked incident).
What could fb do to enable this kind of experience for those that want it? Not that they would, but I’d really like to have a vision of what they should do.
The things that made it different than Facebook were (1) that they didn't screw around with your feed (it was your friends' posts, sorted by date), (2) that discoverability and networking was user intentional and exploratory (pull, rather than suggested / push), & (3) access controls were simple, understandable, and obeyed user intent.