@manton How do you see the followers in an account?
@rishabh There's no way to see followers right now since we don't want follower count to influence people's opinion about who to follow (better to let their content speak for itself). You can see who someone is following in the iOS and macOS apps, though.
@deltafoxtrot Thanks, we plan to. These decisions are worth re-evaluating every once in a while to see if they still hold up. I think this one does.
@manton Every so often I really want to see my followers (because I have found some awesome people that way on Twitter), but then I try to figure out how this will benefit the community long term and I don't see how it could. Thanks!
@manton I’ve been far more comfortable posting to Micro.blog because I don’t know who, if anyone, is seeing what I put out there. Not having that pressure, for me at least, is really liberating, and it’s a major part of what excites me about Micro.blog.
@manton yes, please keep it that way - it’s a bit scary to publish something and then hearing crickets, but at the same time, freeing.
@manton I just encountered this while jumping back in to Micro.blog. I don’t want to see other people’s follower count. I just want to see my own. I’d be happy to have that buried in the account profile somewhere, so people who really don’t want to know, don’t have to see it unless they really go digging for it. But I realize a lot of folks like it this way, and I’ll continue to give it a try.
@jamesdempsey for some reason, i thought that was how many people they were following, not how many people were following them..
@jamesdempsey Since this is a blog-based social space, it might be helpful to think about it in a traditional blog manner: on your blog, you have no idea who (or even how many people, to some degree) follows you; you can tell when someone comments on your blog post (perhaps on more than one blog post), or by doing a lot of poking around in obscure locations (access logs); the same here (comments, naturally, and poking around other people’s lists of people they follow as the “analogue” to access logs). Similarly, what is provided by Micro.blog (at least in the Mac and iOS apps)—the list of people you follow—is analogous to the old Blogroll (hat tip to someone here for this piece of the analogy). Maybe this line of thinking helps understand this position (even if they are not Manton’s own reasons for the position), maybe it doesn’t?
@smokey I think the traditional WordPress blog I’ve had for a number of years is part of what has led me to miss those features. I can see the count of subscribers/followers as well as get page/post viewing statistics very easily on my blog.
@jamesdempsey Ah, I don’t have anything like that installed. Well, I do have the ancient, basic WordPress stats installed, but it’s at the bottom of my Dashboard, so when I do see it, it’s just a quick glance and very basic info, next to nothing, and not including any feed stats. So, practically, there’s nothing to miss. (Also, I’ve been posting into a void for 10+ years now, so I’m used to it ;-) )