One reason I decided to blog on LiveJournal instead of on Blogger is the way LJ has implemented communities— groups of people who have a common interest. Any LJ member can belong to multiple communities and see any posts to those communities on his/her Friends page. Communities can be people who like to read the same things (like yalitlovers, who love YA literature), or who do the same things (like snapshot_hunter, who take wonderful pictures on a given theme and post them). The monthly LJ Spotlight gives these groups exposure but sometimes I stumble across one on my own.

One example that I thought was a neat idea is agentturnaround, officially named "Agent Turnaround Times," which is set up as a blog but allows users to post— and find— info on how long agents take to respond to queries. What's so clever is these folks set up the 26 letters of the alphabet as tags. To find info on agent Rachel Vater, click the v tag. There will be one entry per agent, and then users report feedback in the form of comments. Rachel Vater happens to have 46 as of now. Most agents have fewer, but they vary considerably. Comments usually include the format of the query (snail mail or e-query) and how long the agent took to answer, and what form the answer took.

It's a pretty cool use of the technology, in effect making a simple blog into a rudimentary database. Check it out if you're interested.