Years ago when we launched Micro.blog, I had a clear vision for indie blogging that felt on the cutting edge of the distributed social web. Now that federation is just accepted as the base foundation for any new network, thinking about if that changes our identity. We sort of won. What’s next?
@manton I think you’re an excellent blog hosting company that can match it with WordPress. Everything else in the Fediverse is short-form only.
@manton Why does there have to be a "next"? Why can't there be a continuation? A refinement? A broadening as it were. Make Micro.blog the best platform for short form posts on the internet by focusing on core features, bug fixes, stability, and enhancements.
@joelhamill I agree with that too. I want to refine what we have. The "next" is more a question of whether we should rethink how we talk about Micro.blog, or whether the things I wrote years ago are still the best way to frame it.
@manton I don't know how to phrase this in technical terms, but it feels like many of the federated services are clones of the proprietary ones, or at least drawing heavily from it (pixelfed - instagram, Twitter - Mastodon, etc). This makes sense for applications that offer an alternative for a well-known services. Now that federated services are leading, it's time to rethink the UI, the services offered, and mergung new ideas with old ones.
We sort of have that on MB, but there's more room to grow in that direction, being more in a leading position. What makes a good (and not profitable) blog post? What tools can be expanded to polish the experience further?
@manton I've never really thought of micro.blog in terms of federation. Micro.blog to me is really an integration of what one traditionally calls blogging (this be the hosted blogs) and what one traditionally calls social networks (this be the micro.blog timeline and discover).
For me micro.blog is and has always been the "thing" that Dave Winer is trying to do now with a reboot of blogrolls, but I think the micro.blog approach is the better option. And honestly, the "micro" part really means titleless because there is no limit to how much I type in a timeline post.
The micro.blog timeline is my main social network. I have accounts on other socials, but I don't participate in them to the extent I do here.
@manton 💯
I think you’ve touched on this before, but complying with the standards as they currently exist is not straightforward. Pushing for more complete standardization and broad compatibility should be a part of efforts going forward. Not sure what Micro.blog’s role should be there…
@manton Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. Micro.blog for me is at the center of my contribution to the open web as creator which is tied together with Fediverse-friendly services. That's the way I'm framing it.
@jtr I think you’re on to something here. More refinement, smoothing out bumps in the experience, making things easier across the board would go a long way toward future viability of alternatives like Micro.blog. It’s already very good, but greater polish and reliability are always possible.
@jtr It's a great point. I've never wanted to exactly clone other services because then you also clone all the problems.
@Agiletortoise @manton Ephemera: A lady that I studied with, briefly worked in a company called Macrosoft, until Microsoft had them change their name.
@manton the best way to move forward is to make all of these complex ideas approachable. At the moment many of these services, micro.blog included, are a typical example of being designed by engineers. By making a wider market understand the utility of micro.blog you not only appeal to a wider audience you also contribute to the larger federated web growing as a result.
@joelhamill I agree with this notion. Keep the good architecture going. We all like it, we use it. Keep Micro.blog light on its feet, keep streamlining it, keep iterating where it makes sense.
@manton I have THOUGHTS. Riffing on Google’s mission statement, You could say that Micro.blog saves and organizes my experience, making it useful to me and sharable with others. I can save and sort
and then whatever I save I can share if I want to. If you could add some way to record what I watch and what I listen to, then you’d have the full stack.
(I know this isn’t easy, in part because movies, TV. and music don’t have the equivalent of the ISBN, but the need here wouldn’t be for detailed metadata but rather a relatively frictionless shating of basic information.)
@ayjay Thanks! I think we're getting closer to having a complete experience for books — still a few things I'd like to polish — and then we can move on to movies and whatnot. Maybe later this year.
@frankm Strong agree on this. I also see Micro.blog this way. More of a blogging platform that also has a social timeline. Most of the tweaks and improvements happen on the platform side which, IMO, is right for @manton to focus on.
I may have quibbles with the timeline but at this time, I may just as well federate elsewhere to have a better timeline UI. That said, the community is really robust here so I won't quit the social part entirely.
@gregmorris @manton I'd agree with Greg. This is the second time I've tried micro.blog and the first time I bounced off it because it wasn't intuitive enough for where my headspace was at the time. This time I'm digging in my heels a bit more, but I'm still running into places where I feel stupid like... somehow I look at the page for crossposting and go cross-eyed, and I still think I'm not getting my external posts pulled in and I'm not sure what I'm misunderstanding.
@manton Didn't you mention a while ago that you had thoughts about a sort of "check-in" app like Foursquare/Swarm?
@manton would be great to use a tool like this to blog about places, which I am sure is the motivation behind your interest.
