I’m struggling with micro.blog. I have tried it since it was stsrted after the Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately it’s not possible to get in contact with people or to reach any audience. I thnk the conceptual problem of micro.blog is, that I can’t search for interesting people and pos... jwurzer.micro.blog

@jwurzer Who are you unable to contact? What audience do you hope to reach?

@jwurzer Just in case you don't know, there is a (limited) search on the web under Discover. If you need even more people to follow, you can also follow any Tumblr or Mastodon user.

@jwurzer honestly based on what you've written Micro.blog might not be for you. Best way I can describe it is if you want to create something lasting for yourself (an audience of 1) then this is probably the easiest and simplest way - you might ask why would you do that online? I actually have a longer answer to that. The social layer is an added bonus (not the other way around).

@cdevroe People with same interests: People, developing for mobile operation systems, people, whoe are either converened about privacy and prolitical freedom, consumer, which are excited about god design. Just some examples. There is no way to search for people and my real life social network doesn't know micro.blog at all.

@mikehaynes Thanks for your recommendation. That was the way I have found some six people to follow. Do you know, how the discover page is created? It seems to be a focus on fotos and food. I will try the emoji tags.

@bix Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure, wether I understand it. You mean, the social network has no central database, so that is impossible co create an index to search for posts and people? I can remember, that micro.blog was intended as a decentralized sozial network like diaspora, wan't it?

@manton Interesting. Tumblr and Mastodon is somehow integrated in micro.blog. I'm just using Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Xing and (sometimes) passively Facebook.

@kaa I'm afraid I don't understand your comment, allthoug it sounds interesting. You mean, that micro.blog is not to create a social network or find interesting posts, but to maintain an existing social network, if I can convince fiends and colleagues to join that network? I was excited about micro.blog, becuase I exptected a kind of Twitter replacement without censorship and manipulation of rating and filtering posts.

@jwurzer and that’s the point really, Micro.blog is definitely not a twitter replacement. It’s primarily a blogging platform with a social layer on top. Soo if you’re in the market to create an online presence for yourself primarily and then have some interaction at some point (so you’re not just talking to yourself online), then Micro.blog is the absolute best solution. If you’re looking for a microphone, then maybe Mastadon is better suited for that, dunno? But that’s my take on things.

@jwurzer I tend think of a hierarchy: DayOne (private); Micro.blog (public); Twitter (social). However Micro.blog is at the top for the quality (if not necessarily the quantity) of the interactions to public posts, both in replies and the quality of the conversation. In that sense it’s often easier to join conversations than to create content which leads to a conversation.

@jwurzer micro.blog is like the web of old, where you incrementally find interesting folk. It seems to build deeper relationships with fewer people. I like this, given Dunbar’s number.

@jwurzer I have some sympathy with the lack of search (in the Mac app). I found a possible solution to a problem that someone had a week or three back and just wanted to check if the thing I'd found was helpful. No way that I could see to find it. This must effect my attitude to the platform. Oh that, it's gone... dunno...

@jwurzer The thing with micro.blog is that it has an inherent duality: it is primarily a (micro)blog hosting service but also incorporates a social element. That it displays (blog)posts in a timeline lends itself to being seen as a social network when this isn't, necessarily, its core function. Original posts being juxtaposed with replies (comments) adds to this perception.

When you also consider that you can use M.B as a hosted service (you pay to have your blog here) or self-hosted (you supply your existing RSS feed) this duality is increased as there is no core operating model. It is different things to different people.

It was never intended as a Twitter replacement per se but as a quasi-distributed network conforming to Indieweb principles that allows people to post,read and respond to blogs in a more social manner that encourages ownership of content.

@colinwalker very nicely explained 👍

@strandlines Thanks, that's how I've always seen it but I don't want to step on @manton's toes so am willing to be corrected.

Also, thanks for starting to blog about Mental Health. I'll be reading with great interest to see how your thoughts and experiences compare to my own.

@colinwalker @strandlines Good summary on the duality of M.b. I like that it can replace Twitter or Instagram for some people (it does for me) but it doesn't have to. Similar to my post here from 2017.

@manton 👍

@jwurzer I can see that being an issue. I believe M.b is slowly rolling out features that help people to connect - while at the same time being conscience of the dangers of those features.

One of the best ways I've found to find people, is to look through who other people follow that have similar interests as I do. That has helped.

@jwurzer I recall that @macgenie had a good piece called Where Discover Doesn't Help that may also be useful to you. I had responded to it with some related ideas around Micro Monday. Another good place to find people is to visit the micro.blog profile pages of people you do find interesting and then click through the "Following XYZ users you aren't following" to see people who may be similar.

To some extent, just like you did with Twitter and all your other social networks, you'll likely have to (re-)"build" and "discover" your audience and people you want to interact with. The nice part about it is that it's built on open protocols, so as more and more sites and services support them, you'll be able to interact from one place instead of the typical 4 or more.

Personally, while I highly leverage m.b. and its many discovery aspects, I do it with my own feed reader where I pick and choose who I follow (whether they're on Twitter, Instagram, micro.blog, or their own site) and then read them all there. Then I'm using my own website to collect, write, respond, and interact. It's taken me a while to reframe how I use the social layers of the internet, but ultimately I find it much more healthy and rewarding. #

@colinwalker thanks for your comments re blogging about mental health. I have been inspired by reading other blogs including yours.

@strandlines Thanks. After admitting (to myself more than anything) that I had problems I needed an avenue to explore and deal with them. They say it's best to talk but that's still not something I'm necessarily comfortable doing. The blog is a good outlet.

@kaa Thanks for the recommendation of Mastadon. So Micro.blog is more like an alternative to an own webseite with wordpress? You have to create the audience by other media channels like Twitter? Maybe Medium.com could be an inspiration for Micro.blog, because the portal invites visitors to find interesting stories.

@derekpeden Indeed, It is indeed the best (and tedious) way to build a social network by commenting on publications. That's what I experienced on Twitter. And in the offline world it is a natural experience to show interest for others first. I will check the discovery and emoji search to find people in this network.

@canion Thanks for your comment. That can indeed be an advantage. Micro.blog regulates itself and therefore does not need censorship. People who insult or spread hatred do not find readers or distribution. It's that simple.

@colinwalker Thanks for your comment. Maybe it would be a good idea to integrate Micro.blog into my homepage to allow discussion. I'm not really happy with the integration of disqus in the homepage volla.online of my company. Do you know, wether there is an API or iframe approach for integration?

@galexa You mean sometimes it's good, that content disappears? It's the approach and success of Snapchat, isn't it? Sometimes it indeed better not to archive everything and just ask or create contetn from the scratch again.

@colinwalker that’s interesting. I’ve had so much to digest I think I may find the process of writing about it a way of getting perspective and also in the future, being able to look back and see how my thinking has changed.

@jwurzer As micro.blog adheres to Indieweb standards it sends "webmentions" which are essentially a modern version of pingbacks. By integrating webmention functionality on a blog (there is a plugin for WordPress for example) replies on m.b can show as comments to posts.

@jwurzer in this case I was thinking not good (and frustrating). I hadn’t really thought about it before but was wondering if it made me care less, generally. Too ephemeral for me might be perfect for the majority. Low value thoughts ‘cos I’m not much of a social media person.

@colinwalker A pliugin for WordPress is very interesting. I'm using RapidWeaver for our homepage. Do you now, wether there is a Javascript or Iframe or html snipped temaplete to integrate Micro.blog into any toher content management system than WordPress. I would like to integrate it with the CSS of and the navigation bar of our hoempage.

@jwurzer You could have a look at the API documentation to see if anything meets your needs. I forgot about this.

@jwurzer There’s Sidebar.js that will show your most recent (10, by default) posts; just include the provided script element in your HTML and style the elements accordingly in your CSS.

I think it’s theoretically possible to do other things (like embed an entire Conversation, like @billbennettnz requested), using the API and JS, but there’s no pre-written JS to do this like there is for last N posts. // @colinwalker

@bix There more-or-less is, if you know the ID of one of the posts in the Conversation: micro.blog/posts/conversation?id=6627257 // third time’s the charm?

@bix I imagine it's on the to-do list.

@simonwoods @smokey @bix Looks like conversation feeds currently require authentication because they are part of the API. I think we could probably open this up to not need auth.

@manton Oh, they needed auth so they would know how to filter out blocked users and such, right? So people who wanted to follow the Conversations in a non-Micro.blog-API client would have to give up that personally-filtered view. // @simonwoods @bix

@galexa Thanks for your comment. How are you using Micro.blog in your daily life? What's the benefit for you?

@colinwalker Thanks for this hint. @manton has sent me the link, because I think about integrating micro.blog into the news collections of our Volla Phone. The JSON API is a straigh forward approach. RSS is perfect for a quick demo integration. For the our homepage I'll try the sidebar script.

@smokey I had a look at the API documentation. Sidebar looks promising. I'll try it. Do you think it's possible to add a comment option with micro.blog instead of disqus? The iframe would show the discussion to a specific post in this case. But I can't find something like threads in micro.blog.

@jwurzer Glad there's something you can use.

@jwurzer I know there’s been some discussion before of people’s desire for a “comment with Micro.blog” infrastructure, but nothing really exists yet. Some people add a “See the conversation on Micro.blog” link to their posts, but that link currently has to be discovered manually.

You could conceivably embed an iframe with the HTML version of the Conversation (as shown on the web), I guess, but again you’d have to fetch that URL manually first. Otherwise, it’s going to be getting the Conversation JSON from the API (which currently requires authentication) and doing something with it via JS yourself, like I mentioned above. At least as far as I can tell ;-)

@smokey Thanks for your response. I think, what I would need you be somethink that would make use of the API call GET /posts/conversation?id=[id] I saw also an interesting detail for the Sidebar.js script:

The HTML for your microblog posts can be styled with CSS. The CSS class names include: ... microblog_post (around a single post) How is this CSS class used?

@jwurzer Right, that’s the API call.

For Sidebar.js, those CSS classes are just there in the output of the script to let you style the posts in a way that looks nice on your page, using whatever CSS rules you want to write.

@jwurzer my usage is somewhat random. My instagrams come here automatically, I don't interact a lot but do find things that interest me, I don't follow many people but still can't keep up with the timeline so don't feel like adding many more.