Editing LiveJournal (section)

===The word "friend"===
The dual usage of "friends" as those whose journals one reads, and those one trusts to read one's own journal, has been criticized for being at odds with everyday use of the term. The individual users on a user's friends list may contain a mixture of people met through real world friendships, online friendships and general interests, as well as [[courtesy]] friendships where a user has "[[friending|friend]]ed" someone who friended them. A friends list may represent something entirely unrelated to social relationships, such as a reading list, a collection or a puzzle.<ref>Fono, D. and K. Raynes-Goldie.  [http://k4t3.org/publications/hyperfriendship.pdf "Hyperfriends and Beyond: Friendship and Social Norms on LiveJournal"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070605031535/http://k4t3.org/publications/hyperfriendship.pdf |date=2007-06-05 }}. Internet Research Annual Volume 4: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conference (2006).</ref>

The difference between online and real-world friendships is sometimes a source of conflict, hurt feelings, and other misunderstandings. LiveJournal friendships are not necessarily mutual; any user can befriend or "defriend" any other user at any time.<ref>boyd, danah.  [http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/index.html "Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511140201/http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/index.html |date=2011-05-11 }}.  ''First Monday'', vol. 12, no. 2 (December 2006).</ref>

In the Russian LiveJournal community, the word френд ("friend", an English borrowing) is often used to describe this relationship instead of the native Russian word "друг" ([ drug ]) that translates to "friend".

The [[Dreamwidth]] code fork of LiveJournal has split the 'friend' concept into its two component pieces of subscription and access.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=124 |title=If you're coming from LiveJournal to Dreamwidth: Terminology: Subscribe/Access |publisher=Dreamwidth.org |date=2010-04-24 |access-date=2010-08-05 |archive-date=2010-06-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100621084838/http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=124 |url-status=live }}</ref>