Amusingly enough, when I was still working for LJ, it was always "LJ is trying to be MySpace!" *G*
I don't think LJ is trying to be "like Facebook" at all. (At most, they're looking at Tumblr.) The thing is, long-style updates are very far over on the chart of "how much user engagement it takes to involve them" -- I can't find the chart I'm thinking of to show you, but basically, the more effort it takes from someone to start participating on the site, the less likely they are to come back. (The Forrester engagement ladder is not what I am thinking of, but it is close.) LJ (and other blogging platforms) are very high on the "how much effort and engagement it takes", and that's why blogging-only platforms are generally stagnant in growth but platforms that enable more micro-updates (Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk, Google+, and yes, even Facebook) are more successful: they make it easier for people to participate.
So, since it's long since been shown that one of the major, if not the major, draws and unique features of LJ (in terms of one of the major attractors of both users and readers to the site) is communities, and one of the major things to do with communities is to comment in them, I'm about 85% sure that this update was intended to simplify the commenting process in order to make it more alluring for people who are in that 90% in the Law of Participation Inequality, the people for whom "make a journal update" or "make a community post" is way, way too far over on the engagement chart, but "make a comment" wouldn't be.
People see "oh my God, Facebook!", but it's really nothing like Facebook at all. Facebook is just the leader of the low-engagement social media services right now, so anything that improves low-engagement interaction is going to read to the audience as Facebooky. It really, really, really isn't, though! The changes LJ is making are quite definitely on the track to enable and streamline low-engagement interaction, but they're nothing like Facebook.
...Sorry, you probably didn't want an impromptu lecture on social media theory! But it annoys me whenever people immediately jump to accusing a site of wanting to be like another site whenever they make a change, because the changes are often nothing like that other site, it's just that both sites (and, pretty much, every web 2.0 site out there) are using the same social media theory underpinnings to guide their product development.
(PS: if you want a demonstration of how offering low-engagement options makes it easier for people to participate, look at dw_suggestions. Dozens more people vote in the polls than comment. If we didn't have the polls, we might get one or two additional comments, but probably not. Commenting is a more high-engagement activity than poll answering.)
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I don't think LJ is trying to be "like Facebook" at all. (At most, they're looking at Tumblr.) The thing is, long-style updates are very far over on the chart of "how much user engagement it takes to involve them" -- I can't find the chart I'm thinking of to show you, but basically, the more effort it takes from someone to start participating on the site, the less likely they are to come back. (The Forrester engagement ladder is not what I am thinking of, but it is close.) LJ (and other blogging platforms) are very high on the "how much effort and engagement it takes", and that's why blogging-only platforms are generally stagnant in growth but platforms that enable more micro-updates (Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk, Google+, and yes, even Facebook) are more successful: they make it easier for people to participate.
(It's called the Law of Participation Inequality and it's something that every site frets about.)
So, since it's long since been shown that one of the major, if not the major, draws and unique features of LJ (in terms of one of the major attractors of both users and readers to the site) is communities, and one of the major things to do with communities is to comment in them, I'm about 85% sure that this update was intended to simplify the commenting process in order to make it more alluring for people who are in that 90% in the Law of Participation Inequality, the people for whom "make a journal update" or "make a community post" is way, way too far over on the engagement chart, but "make a comment" wouldn't be.
People see "oh my God, Facebook!", but it's really nothing like Facebook at all. Facebook is just the leader of the low-engagement social media services right now, so anything that improves low-engagement interaction is going to read to the audience as Facebooky. It really, really, really isn't, though! The changes LJ is making are quite definitely on the track to enable and streamline low-engagement interaction, but they're nothing like Facebook.
...Sorry, you probably didn't want an impromptu lecture on social media theory! But it annoys me whenever people immediately jump to accusing a site of wanting to be like another site whenever they make a change, because the changes are often nothing like that other site, it's just that both sites (and, pretty much, every web 2.0 site out there) are using the same social media theory underpinnings to guide their product development.
(PS: if you want a demonstration of how offering low-engagement options makes it easier for people to participate, look at