If you are considering a
weblog for yourself, there are many reasons to look closely at
LiveJournal.
For starters, it is free. The free LJ service is extremely flexible, but has some limitations that only paid accounts can access.
Free accounts have:
Subjected entries, spellchecking, the ability to change the dates of your posts, mood and music indicators, message board style comments, post archive, memories list, friends post lister, the ability to lock your posts to specific groups of people, the ability to ban people from posting comments, limited ability to customize the look of your LJ and to embed it in another website, archiving and downloading of posts, to name just a few.
Paid accounts have everything the free ones do, plus more flexibility in customizing your LJ, the ability to post by phone and email, an LJ subdomain (http://yourname.livejournal.com), an LJ email address, more user icons, photo storage and embedded polls and surveys. There are other added benefits, but these are the ones that I am most familiar with.
The ability to keep track of your friends' day to day lives is a wonderful thing. Simply clicking on the "Friends" link in your LJ takes you to the most recent posts made by the people in your friend list, where you can read and comment.
Many people enjoy the RSS feed feature, which enables them to keep up with syndicated sites, such as their favorite comic or news servers.
There is client software available for every operating system currently in use, all of it, to the best of my knowledge, free for the download. Additionally, heavy duty LJ fans can download the open source code and run it on their own server.
Perhaps the best thing about LJ is the sense of community. Through reading friends' posts and commenting, you will find other LJ users (and they will find you) who you find that you are sympatico with. A great way to build friendships and help to make the world a better place.