Croissant is getting some great press. Just a few I’ve noticed: Six Colors, MacStories, TechCrunch. I don’t need it because Micro.blog cross-posts to everything from my blog, but would be cool if the app could post to blogs in the future too.
@manton Thought as much. I sent a request as soon as they announced 😊 Maybe if Micro.blog positioned itself as a social timeline service powered by your microblog, it would be considered by default for such apps?
@pratik Our we not positioned as "a social timeline service powered by your microblog"? I thought that's what we were doing. 🙂 But it's really hard to get the messaging across.
@manton -- when i saw this i thought why doesn't manton do this. a simple UI on top of the back end you have, that does all this and more. doesn't your server do more? i wish i had the bandwidth to put something out there, but this one needs a mobile app.
@manton -- if you want attention from reporters you have to break through the fog. one way to do that is to give them a simple timely product that's small and focused that they want themselves. that's why croissant hits the spot. they also copy each other, that's why there are 5 pieces about that product.
@manton It definitely came up in conversation, but we didn’t want to overextend ourself before launch!
But once things settle down a little I’d love to have a chat about making that happen
@manton tbh, the blogging platform aspect is dominant. The social aspects come next. But probably people don't want to start a "blog" (perception of having to do too much) even when their social media account is technically a blog (place where they write)
@pratik is it more dominant, or is it more aligned to your goals, as in, the blogging part works for what you want blogging to do, but the social part doesn't work for what you want social to do. That's distinct from the balance of the service itself.
@jsonbecker Hmmm…considering “blog” is in the name and not “social” or “media”, it’s evident, right? I mean, the blogging part works for me but may not for others in terms of perception
@manton Croissant’s pricing makes micro.blog seem like really good value. You get everything Croissant can do and more and a blog for only a couple of bucks more a month.
@BenRiceM Cool, it would be great to chat about it! Feel free to reach out whenever. Congrats on the release, it looks really nice.
@dave It's a good question. I want to encourage people to post to their blog first, and then cross-post out from there. But there's definitely more we could do.
I pointed ChatGPT at micro.blog and asked it what it thought your positioning was ...
Micro.blog positions itself as a hybrid platform that combines blog hosting with a social media-style timeline. It provides an easy-to-use environment for both short-form and long-form posts while emphasizing user ownership of content and fostering a friendly, distraction-free community without likes, follower counts, or ads  .
// @pratik
@JohnPhilpin I'm hitting up every developer making a new app for posting to socials. But this concern is valid. Micro.blog is fine as is. I was mostly talking about selling it to a different set of users a bit differently. That can be resource-intensive tho. @manton
@pratik selling ( and marketing ) and all under that Umbrella is hard - and the best ones make it look so easy that anyone thinks they can do it … they can’t.
And even good ones have a hard time doing it for themselves.
And … I do say this a lot … AND the message never seems to get through - meta!
@JohnPhilpin Yup. Also, we should be careful for what we wish for. Scaling up is not as easy, especially for a one-person company.
@pratik we don’t know what kind of business Manton is building .. or what kind of business he wants to build .. you know .. the bigger things .. Purpose - Vision - Why - To what end? .. I typically find that once these kind of questions are truly bottomed out .. the answers inform ‘now what’.
I just read Sarah Perez’s piece and nothing really adds to micro blog and as she points out - it might be short lived - federation and all that …
I am with @pratik .. ‘blog’ is right there in the name and despite what we all think - not sure most of humanity agrees we need one - so ‘’don’t need’ ‘too hard’ is the block.
But as @dave says @manton has the infrastructure already .. how hard to create another app that only cross posts?
@pratik @JohnPhilpin I definitely think it would be unwise to push scaling too hard on a product with a team of one person plus 1 - 3 contractors.
@manton I’m curious to know if they can automatically cross post to threads or if it is semi-manual like in micro.blog. I tried downloading and testing but the app froze while I tried logging onto my threads account 🤷♂️
@timthinks Curious what you mean by semi-manual? Micro.blog feels the most automatic to me, since usually you just post to your blog and don't need to think about the rest.
@manton maybe mine is not setup correctly then? When I post to my blog it auto posts to my mastodon but in order to cross post to threads i have to open micro.blog in mobile safari (I can’t find the button in the iOS app), then hit cross post, then I get redirected to threads where I have to hit post.
@timthinks Sorry, yes, the Threads support is still in beta while we wait for Meta to approve it, so it's probably not enabled on your account. If you haven't emailed help@micro.blog yet, send an email with your Instagram username and I can enable it.
@manton started noticing this yesterday but so happy that I can do this through Micro.Blog :) thanks for the great work!