Is it unusual that nearly a third of my lj subscribers met me before I started using lj? That doesn’t even include the ones that I met after starting my lj but before I became aware of (or helped them create) their journal, let alone the ones I’ve met after reading their lj. I’ve at least talked to 158 out of my 199 subscriptions in person at some point. 157/196 if you exclude a couple deleted and redundant accounts. That’s an 80% hit rate. How odd is that?
[My initial suspicion is that the ljers I know from cmu will largely adhere to the demographic I posted, and will in fact, know their subscription lists better than I do, and that the homo-segment of my population won’t know their subscription lists as well. This has been mostly born out so far. For the nonhomo, noncmu folk among you, I have no predictions. =)]
I’m not sure why that would be unusual, but perhaps that’s just because my statistics on that score aren’t all that different from your: I knew 28 of the 44 people on my “friends list” before I started using lj. I can also say that I’ve talked in person (at least briefly) with all but 6 of the people on that same list, which would be a roughly 86% hit rate.
Then again, I only have 44 people on my list as opposed to the 196 on yours…
😉
Hmm, I can only think of one subscription that I didn’t meet before I knew about their lj. 80% does seem unusually low.
I take that back. There’s 2.5 subscriptions that I don’t know well in person.
I have 72 people on my friends list (not counting me), and I knew 60 of them before I had or even read anybody else’s livejournal (and, as in your statistic, that doesn’t count people I met after starting a livejournal but whom I did not meet because of livejournal). I have talked in person with 67 of those 72. So your percentages don’t seem odd at all to me.
But I think that’s because of livejournal’s origins as a mechanism for groups of friends to stay in touch, and it remains optimized for that.
OK, I’ll be the first to say that my demographics are different from yours. : )
There are some people that I’ve met locally that later subscribed to my LJ, and there are some long-distance friends that use LJ as a means for keeping tabs on my life. But primarily my LJ is subscribed to by pen-pals and silent readers.
OK, I haven’t added them up. Maybe I should do so before making these blanket statements….
OK. I’ve got 232 subscriptions.
1 is my own LJ,
40 are people I met before subscribing,
22 are people I’ve met since subscribing,
7 are double-journals (2nd journal for someone already, subscribed),
That leaves 142 people subscribed whom I’ve never met.
My demographics are wayyyy different– I only knew 6 of 63 of my LJ “friends” in person before knowing them online. Most of them, I actually met online in other contexts and then later found that they had started livejournals.
I guess this marks me as one of those crazy people with too many imaginary internet friends.
before lj i knew: 46 (74%)
met after lj: 6 (10%)
still haven’t met*: 10 (16%)
*includes people who have friended me, but i have not friended back because i don’t know who they are and have decided that my journal is no longer a place where i will make friends, but simply keep up with those i already have.
of those I have friended (78) 76 I met before LJ. Two I haven’t are jwz and hardartist (the Sexy Losers artist)