New blog post: You should start a blog now (or later)

@iChris Bear and Pika are both great, but I wonder why not Micro.blog? Would love your feedback. I won’t be offended. 🙂 Just want to keep making things better for long-form posts.

@manton I’m not Chris, but I’m going to give you feedback anyway. I fiddle around with both Pika and Bear, because I like to see how these systems work. Neither is anywhere close to being as full-featured as micro, but I think for the average person who isn’t strong with tech both have a simpler user interface. There’s less to understand – to figure out.

Pika’s post editor is more like what people are used to seeing. On both micro and bear there’s an assumption that people will learn some markdown. That is a point of possible confusion for new users – “what is markdown? Why are there so few buttons?”

I think bear and pika have nicer themes to choose from. Just my opinion. And by nice, I mean very simple.

You are doing about 1000x more than either of pika or bear, but for some people that might not be an immediate advantage. It adds complication.

@bloftin2 Good feedback, thanks. That sort of matches some of my assumptions. I know we can do a better job of being accessible to new folks.

@manton Ha! It was one of those blog posts that just came from a quick idea and I got rolling without giving it too much thought. My guess is that because I don’t use Micro.blog for blogging so much as a social network + cross posting app first?

@manton There’s an element of Micro.blog being more nerdy somehow, but that just may be my own bias more than how someone brand new would view it. Fediverse and cross-posting are very important features to me, but not essential for writing a blog.

@iChris Cool, makes sense. Hope it didn’t sound like I was complaining. A post like that doesn’t need to include everything. I think “more nerdy somehow” is fair and both a strength and weakness we can work on.

@manton No I appreciate the question and it’s good + vulnerable of you to ask. :) Being ok with what one person might think is a weakness, but others consider a strength is a great strategy that I’m sure is difficult to hang on to sometimes.