I vote we return to the age of late Geocities, forums, and early blogs. Less conformity in design, less "social" by modern definition, but more people who just liked one topic enough to build something about it and communities forming around them.
It was a constant process of landing on a friends profile, being amazed by some feature or design and then going back to work on your own.
It also felt more like people’s profiles expressed through design, or music, or gifs, or other media, rather than what they had to say or any form of posts. I don’t really remember “posting status updates” at all, but I’m sure it was a feature.
And then at some point Facebook wiped it all out.
I can’t see people wanting to manage their own homepage. But then again, I remember we all did in high school for MySpace... maybe we will again.
The keyboard was what allowed such interaction.. How are nowadays' teens to manage such designs if their main device is a touchscreen?
The killer feature? Being able to tag people in photos, such an obvious thing, but LJ was unable to do it. Add events and it was game over for LJ.
Incidentally, I said at the time, it was a massive strategic blunder for Google+ to launch without full integration with the Google Calendar. People want a one-stop shop and FB was it for photos and events.