Ben Werdmuller, linking today to a story on Ghost federation:
I’m also convinced there’s room for another fediverse-compatible social network that handles both long and short-form content in a similar way to Substack’s articles and Notes. If someone else doesn’t build that, I will.
Yeah, it’s weird how no one has built this and certainly no one has been actively hosting thousands of blogs with long and short-form content, a social timeline, and fediverse integration for years. 🤪
@manton he has a point though -- the standards in the fediverse are set by services that don't handle full featured blog posts.
the only way out of the conundrum imho is to plow ahead and not try to peer with them, only try to peer with each other.
then compete, grow, build, interate, steal ideas from each other, and then iterate some more.
if there's demand for a more full featured network the old networks will find they can't get into the market easily. if there's no demand, then it won't matter.
but waiting for them to move has proven not to work.
we've been waiting for 17+ years.
but instead of trying to work with them, as you have been doing, we should be working with each other.
same mistake developers always make, i've seen it happen a dozen times probably.
if you want to talk, i'm around. ;-)
@manton and we should talk with ben too. he's smart, and makes software, and is plugged into places we aren't.
the big reveal here is the rarest idea in tech -- "working together." we don't do it. it's not part of the practice.
@dave Ben is great. My post was half joking, half frustration because I feel that Micro.blog is what he's asking for, but somehow what we've been doing is invisible.
@manton I take your point completely! If it's ok, I might drop you an email with a few thoughts. Obviously I'm well aware of (and appreciative of) what you've built!
@iChris Hmm, I've heard of this thing called "marketing"... It only works on TikTok, right? Need to look into it. 🤪
@manton marketing, marketing, marketing! Notice how I didn't say advertising 😊 But then again, be careful about what you wish for. You may no longer be able to take vacations if the hordes descend.
@manton Well, true. But, you have to admit that micro.blog, as good as it is, is also limited to your tastes, opinions and preferences. As of this moment it's still the best choice for me so I stay but there are quite a few things I don't like about micro.blog. Obviously you can't be everything to everyone so it would seem to me that more choices would be a good thing.
As far as I know there are only three blog hosting services that are compatible with ActivityPub: micro.blog, Write.as and WordPress. Ghost would be the fourth.
@manton While I love Micro.blog, I feel like it's only a second-class citizen on Mastodon and Bluesky. My chief concern is that posts that exceed 300/500 characters are truncated in an ugly fashion, unless I give them a title, which I usually don't like to do. This is not just a problem on M/B, but also on the Micro.blog timeline itself.
This frustrated me for a while and now I've just decided to accept it.
My other frustration with Micro.blog is that most of my community isn't here. It's on Facebook. On second thought, that's not a frustration with MB. It's a frustration with Facebook, which closed off its APIs in 2018. The reason they gave at the time was because of Cambridge Analytics, but it worked out to be a great moat to keep Facebook users locked in.
@MitchW Mastodon and Bluesky aren’t blogging platforms.
This is the challenge that @Manton has.
Microblog is never going to be as good as any point solution in its portfolio of features, but it is the only one that does it all …
Knowingly or not, Manton has done exactly what Chris Lockhead says should be done … don’t be number 2 and let someone else define your category, define your own category and be number one.
So what is the category that @manton has defined?
Well that is why you need Marketing .. a discipline that does not seem to be well understood in these halls .. which is why maybe it is so often laughed at, which in turn might just have a connection to why the world only seems to talk about Wordpress, Twitter, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky ….
@JohnPhilpin "Don't be the best, be the only.".
Micro.blog is a platform that combines blogging and microblogging. That's a terrible marketing line, but an accurate topline description. It also has community, notes, bookshelves, supports photoblogging well, etc.
It is also simple enough for normal people to use — unlike Wordpress — with advanced extensibility that require coding skills.
@MitchW ... all of that is right - and makes for a great story - marketing's job is to distil into many headlines, messages and stories with a variety of audiences (that might give a damn) in mind.
This is not that line ...
The One Stop Shop For Aggregation and Distribution That You Didn't Think You Needed.
It might be the start of the overall arc.
@MitchW and some of the 'advanced extensibility' does not require coding skills.
WHILE
The term 'no code' is not used on the Micro Blog web site
AND
I know Micro Blog is not a 'No Code' story
IT IS TRUE THAT
When Marc B declared 'an end to software' in 1999 - we all know that wasn’t quite right - and didn’t .... and yet somehow it stuck.
@JohnPhilpin Aha. Haven’t heard of him or his statement before. “Rumours of software death seem grossly exaggerated” - O.E. Auran
