I would call the next episode of Micro @Monday “AMA” (Ask Manton Anything), but “anything” is way too broad a parameter. But do let me know what questions about Micro.blog you have. @manton will do his best to answer them! (You can email me at jean@micro.blog, too.)

@macgenie Some of us discussed this off-and-on last year, but Monday #50 🎉 with @cleverdevil made me think about it again: any plans to offer a “one-click” configuration option that “installs” microgram or micromemories on a hosted blog, i.e. creates the new page with the code pasted in already and then adds the page to the navigation (possibly auto-detecting the timezone, since M.b knows that)?

For a lot of people here, manually doing those steps is easy, but for many—and for people who are still stuck in silos and maybe looking for an escape—it’s still too much tech gobbledygook.

I appreciate there are a number of issues, from dev-time-to-benefit ratio to how closely you want to integrate third-party services and so on, but it’s something that would improve the accessibility of these features to a greater audience.

@smokey Excellent question. Added to the queue for episode 51.

@macgenie Feature question: Have you considered the possibility of private accounts and private blogs?

Non-feature question: Have you discovered any unexpected yet eye-catching (pleasant, interesting, delightful, etc) blogs from Micro.blog in the past year?

@simonwoods Completely private or approve-followers private? If latter, we would know who’s following us, right? That goes against Micro.Blog principles. @macgenie

@pratik Completely private, for sure, at least to begin with. For example, an account for me to manage whilst the blog is for, say, family; only I need to manage the account side, whilst family gets access to the blog.

You could also implement an invite-to-account-only system to help get around the non-metric principle but that's much more in the realm of complicated features.

@simonwoods Makes sense. Or make it password-accessible.

@simonwoods Those are great! I especially like the second one, from a discovery point of view (and also from a “does Manton ever get to use his own service or is he always stuck working on it” point of view :-P ).

@pratik @simonwoods Except here it would be a login email instead of a password ;-)

Joking aside, the lack of private solutions to any of these use-cases is one of the big issues with the IndieWeb-centric solutions (I know people are working on it, but people on the silos who depend on access control and want out of the silo still have no option today…).

@macgenie I agree with a password protected blog circle thing. I thought simplistic way would be to have password protected RSS feed and you share each other’s password with your family / group for access via @netnewswire etc. But probably security issues. Also protecting the private status of said data you have to get right if you sell as a service, so probably much more complicated in the real world

@simonwoods I completely agree. I know micro.blog isn’t either Facebook or Twitter, but both offer nominally private communications. If we want people to leave them, I think there will have to be a way to handle limiting access to some content. (I miss Glassboard!)

@macgenie What I wonder is how Manton stays in shape to cope with the enormous work load he must have now. Having enough to do is a privilege, but having too much to do can be very stressful, and can be destructive even if you like what you’re doing.

@smokey BTW, I appreciate the use of the highly technical term “gobbledygook.” I was a consumer of literal gobbledygook. 8-year-old me ate that stuff up. Literally.

@macgenie If I don’t occasionally trot out such highly technical terms, someone is liable to revoke my tech card ;-)

I had no idea it was ever edible, though!

@macgenie What’s a letter or two between friends :-)

@macgenie I had no idea that Gobbledygook was ever actually a thing! Fascinating!

@macgenie AMAM - Ask Manton Anything about Micro.blog