I agree that mostly this is a good way to keep up with people's lives, at the moment I'm just wondering what it does to my other forms of communication. Right now I certainly use LJ as my main way of keeping up with everyone back in the states, but letters and emails and IMs seem dialogue based. I was thinking this morning about how much like a monologue this seems to me - and by reading a bunch of other people's life-monologues and having them read mine, is there still something major missing because there is no dialogue? That said, anyone I want to dialogue with is usually just an IM/email/phone call away, so it's moot.