As always, it's the details that nag, or AKICILJ

[lydy]

Does anyone one know if it is possible to determine who has been looking at a locked post on LJ? That is to say, if I have a friends-locked post, can I tell which accounts have viewed that content? I don't know of any way to do that, but there are many things I do not know about LJ.

Thank you.

Note, this post is _not_ locked. If you know the reason I asked this, probably this is not the place to discuss it.

Comments

[pameladean]

I don't know much about LJ either. There's an opt-in thingy called My Guests. If you put your journal on it, other people who have opted in will show up in a list of your "visitors" and you will show up when you visit their journals. As far as I can tell, both parties have to opt in, so it is bound to be incomplete.

P.

[fmsv.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Pamela. I'd been going to suggest My Guests, but had missed the part where it only shows those visitors who have My Guests turned on. (I knew there was a reason that I'd had it turned off in my journal.)

[pameladean]

Yes, it's turned off in mine too. I mostly don't want to see what people who don't mind being seen are doing, as it turns out.

P.

[redbird]

I don't think so. There's a "my guests" feature that, if you and the other person both have it turned on, will show who has been reading your journal. But it's not retroactive, and even if you have it turned on, it won't tell you that I've been looking at your journal because I don't have it on. The FAQ also says it can take 24 hours for this to start working:

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faq/298.html

There might be weird things you/someone could do with web bugs, or with other third party code, but I don't know how to make those work or whether you could do it without also giving random other people access to those entries.

[guppiecat]

It's here, if you opt in to it: http://www.livejournal.com/statistics/guests/

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Thank you all. I just turned it on on my LJ just to see what it looks like. I don't imagine I'll leave it on very long, as I don't really care, but I'm curious as to what one can know.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I had it turned off since day 1, I think.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

There are some non-LJ-specific ways to do this but I cannot recommend using them.

If you have access to Google Analytics or other tracking software that uses a "web bug" (an invisible 1x1 image) then the log of accesses to that web bug tells you who the "referrer" was (which web page the image got embedded in.) Then you can tell whether somebody saw the post in their friends feed, because the referrer will be "markgritter.livejournal.com/friends" (for example).

This can be combined with other tracking information to do more (like see if that person read the comments or came back to the specific page for the post), but I would not consider this ethical for use in a personal journal (and some object even to commercial use.)

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I don't have an answer for you, but I'm curious what "AKICILJ" means.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

All Knowledge Is Contained In LiveJournal, a derivative of AKICIF: All Knowledge is Contained in Fanzines, more commonly known these days as All Knowledge is Contained in Fandom.

The Urban Dictionary definition provides more context.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

See now, when I googled, I didn't even get an Urban Dictionary option. I got links to this post.

Thanks! That's very helpful. :)

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

see? AKICIF