brentsimmons
brentsimmons

Blogs are social media. These days people seems to think social media is just social networking — it’s not. Blogs were referred to as social media long before there was Twitter.

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Gte@mastodon.social
Gte@mastodon.social

@brentsimmons What if we made the whole thing a comments section?

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brentsimmons
brentsimmons

@Gte Lordy!

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brentsimmons
brentsimmons

@Gte I think I get what you’re saying, though. Everyone always said “don’t read the comments; they’re toxic” and then Twitter said, “Oh yeah! This whole fucking thing is comments! The biggest comments section there could ever be! Boom!”

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jsit@social.coop
jsit@social.coop

@brentsimmons And Twitter kind of isn’t even a “social network.” You can’t be “friends” with somebody on Twitter, just mutual followers.

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Gte@mastodon.social
Gte@mastodon.social

@brentsimmons Oh right. Yeah. I was cracking wise. There is value in conversation but the structure of Twitter evolved into a comments section where the endorphin rush is the likes for the dunk. That’s how we got the Character of the Day. There can be value but it is difficult to encourage via whatever game mechanics we’ve seen tried so far.

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Ciantic@twit.social
Ciantic@twit.social

@brentsimmons @Gte

There is odd feature in Micro Blog to Mastodon integration.

When Brent replies to someone in Mastodon it adds this extra box each time. It's not happening in "normal" replies.

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heyscottyj
heyscottyj

@brentsimmons This! For me, the internet was born on social media. Dialing up to BBS in the late 80s/early 90s to post on newsgroups, have multiline chats, and play asynchronous games... it was all social. There was social media before there was the web.

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mcg
mcg

@Ciantic @manton FYI

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In reply to
manton
manton

@mcg @Ciantic Thanks, I'll look into this. Micro.blog is including a link to the user profile just as part of the HTML… Seems like a Mastodon display problem but I assume I can work around it.

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manton
manton

@Ciantic I guess this is some kind of Mastodon preference? When I view the thread on Mastodon.social it doesn't look like that.

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Ciantic@twit.social
Ciantic@twit.social

@manton I don't think it's preference, here is more screenshots.

All posts you Micro bloggers put have those embeds.

I don't know why...

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bertspace@fosstodon.org
bertspace@fosstodon.org

@brentsimmons preach.

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Rongwrong
Rongwrong

@brentsimmons Usenet was social media too, avant la lettre. Even more so than blogs I’d say.

I wonder, what were some of the first (pre-electronic) social media? At first I thought letters to the editor. But graffiti on walls must be the earliest?

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renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@brentsimmons I agree. Twitter and the like are basically status updates enriched (devalued?) with off-the-cuff remarks.

Is a new form of online, low-access communication possible that goes beyond blogs and social media, without the problems associated with pseudonymity? It's after all already known how to pass secrets without revealing them, yet no one has used this afaik for identity.

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GabrielCornish
GabrielCornish

@heyscottyj I was really young at the time and I missed the BBS days, but I’m curious what kind of asynchronous games were being played back then.

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heyscottyj
heyscottyj

@GabrielCornish The one I remember most was called, I think, Star Trader? You’d mine and sell or trade reseources from across the galaxy to try to obtain riches and control over territory.

That sounds pretty glorious, but it was command-line and I was fourteen, so who knows for sure 😂.

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GabrielCornish
GabrielCornish

@heyscottyj that sounds pretty awesome!

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Skarjune
Skarjune

@brentsimmons Indeed, e.g. blogs propelled WordPress with the basic format plus networking that leveraged Google search. Now, WordPress is a bloated CMS difficult to blog on, and even messy for developers to deal with. Here, at Micro.blog I see how it began, and it works.

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