🤔 Interesting! Trello just added a feature called “Emoji Reactions”. Get’s me thinking about Micro.blog “Responses” again.

@Burk I don’t know that I’d want reactions on micro.blog. It’s a pretty shallow form of communication, and primarily just creates a vanity metric.

@Burk I like that. I’m working on a sort of micro.blog instagram app and I was thinking about adding some sort of emoji response 🤔

@sethdrebitko It's a tough one for sure. There are defintiely pros and cons (and everything in between). I do feel like there is a way to do it right and have it add value and not become a popularity contest. Going to take a lot of thinking though!

@sethdrebitko I'm with you on that one. I don't know if seeing responses adds anything in particular to a post or conversation? But now I feel like I'm looking down my Scrooge glasses at the idea... sorry. I'm really not a fan of just scrolling through comments, feeling impulsively like I must "like" them all... I much prefer coming here and taking the time to comment on something I agree with or disagree with, or if I really must, reply with an emoji :D

@herself Exactly. So many times I've instinctively gone to favorite something here, then realized I can't and as a result taken the time to thoughtfully reply... or continue scrolling :P

@sethdrebitko @herself one thing about emoji reactions is that unlike “like” or event Facebook’s top 4/5 reactions, there are a WIDE variety of responses. Which to me makes it feel less like you HAVE to respond and more that you are able to, but only if you want.

@sethdrebitko I think shallow responses are kind of nice—sometimes you don’t have time to reply fully and it can be polite to just 👍. In fact, I sometimes go back to likes and flesh out the reply. So it acts like a bookmark, an ‘ack’ and a reminder to return. That’s not too shallow? It’s the vanity metric that is the issue. It’s a similar problem with ‘friends’ lists. Usually all we see of someone’s ‘friends’ is a number. Which makes me miss blogrolls, when people took the time to say “Ok so this is Heather, she is an archivist…” and, yeah, that starts to feel like a friend. Both likes and friend counts are also fed into algorithms and become a basis for popularity (aka ‘value’, according to these networks). But popularity stems from discussion anyway—you don’t need an algorithm, if people are talking and linking, it’ll happen. There’s a larger algorithm at play here that the networks can’t replicate. @herself 👍!

@kicks 👏

@kicks That's true -- I find I don't spend a huge amount of time daily here on micro.blog because I don't always have the time to interact. But when I do "come over” the conversations are always interesting to catch up on :)

@kicks that’s definitely true about how popularity and interest sort of snowball.. and oh, I agree so much about blogrolls! Love them. I guess when you (not you personally!) get into dangerous territory is when follower and like numbers are interpreted as indicative of quality or value. Most of us here are grownups—we’ve seen the development of the web and social media emerge— and we can understand the difference, but it’s easy to fall into that way of thinking all the same I think. I’d argue that while those numbers could be useful to the individual I don’t think they need to be broadcast to the wider group...

@herself Cool—found your blogroll. This is great! I especially like the links to your diary-x blog. Really wanted to check out your links page from back then, but there appears to be none archived. (I also really appreciate your links to Blot things—was unaware of Blot.)

@kicks thank you! They are a funny old relic from an earlier time. :)) I really do need to update the blogroll too—it doesn’t feel finished, but I guess they are meant to be evolving! :)