All bloggers eventually want to build their own blog software. All feed reader developers want their own sync platform. All blog hosts want a feed reader.
In 2026, I predict approximately thousands of niche open web apps, each with a small number of users who wouldn’t want to use anything else.
@manton Fortunately for micro.blog’s financial health, I have absolutely NO desire to build my own blog software.
@ffmike Thanks! The thing I left out is that building your own blog software is almost always a mistake. 🙂 It’s fun at first, until you realize you need all the features and don’t actually want to manage servers.
@manton To be fair, when I started blogging it included buying a server & colocating it at my ISP, hand-crafting HTML, and selling ads to pay for it all. I am IMMENSELY glad to no longer be dealing with any of that! (So thanks again for keeping micro.blog easy & affordable).
@manton Welllll, I see what you’re doing there but if you get away for a moment from the techies I think most bloggers are happy with blog software made by someone else. For example, I’m more techy than almost all my friends and I don’t want to make my own blog software. The few of my friends who are also bloggers don’t want to roll their own.
@manton this is very true. On the blog side I don’t want much to do with trying to build that out 🤣. However, on the feed reader side I could see benefits there as if someone has the technical knowledge everyone likes to read things their own way 🤷♂️.
@Miraz I might’ve exaggerated slightly for effect. 🙂 I’m glad to hear it, though. I want to keep making blog software for as many people as possible.
@manton Yep. This was me:
2020: I’m writing my own CMS!
2021: This is painful to write.
2023: This is painful to maintain.
2024: Screw it, Wordpress or something idk
2026: I’m writing my own CMS!
@manton AI makes building it easy, but probably makes the network effect worse. Federated networks should help a lot here. Go ahead, build your own thing, and then use it to jump in with everyone else!
