Medium and Wordpress.com are silos you should try avoiding uncertainquark.micro.blog

@uncertainquark this is another great piece, Jatan, and a timely one for me. You seem to write posts that land exactly when I need to read them :)

@uncertainquark Interesting post... I do think Micro.blog handles this well: 1) RSS subscribers get moved when you move your domain name; 2) you can export email newsletter subscribers; and 3) you can keep your Micro.blog followers by adding an external feed to Micro.blog. Migrating followers between 2 completely different social networks wouldn't work because the users won't exist there.

@manton Thanks! I agree that the portability of email and RSS subscribers works perfectly well on micro.blog hosted blogs but I was actually referring to the Timeline and social aspect of micro.blog and not the blogs themselves. However, I now realize from your third point that because of the external feed option, a micro.blog user's profile doesn't need to move or change just to reflect a new or moved blog. It's something I've extensively used myself but never quite realized it in this specific way!

I understand moving micro.blog followers to another social network can't work but I'm wondering if we can move followers between two micro.blog accounts owned by the same person? Or if we can add one micro.blog account's feed as an external source to another's stream maybe? Or is it simply not necessary because of the way external feeds work? I just want to be sure of how the system works, and then I'll update my blog post's text to reflect accordingly.

@jasraj Haha, my mind seems to be successfuly creating personalized content for you without the algorithm. ;)

@uncertainquark Using an external feed as a source on a different account is probably the way to go. I actually do that for a couple of our blogs so it's easier to manage in one place. Moving followers between accounts is interesting... Haven't heard anyone request that but in theory it's something we could do. Thanks!

@uncertainquark The ‘Follow’ feature is a pretty insidious addition. It’s 100% intended as a lock-in feature. BTW there’s nothing stopping Substack and others from rolling it out in the future. So yes, RSS and e-mail are our best bet.

@pratik Yep, Substack could add such a lock-in in the future for sure. So far they haven't and that's good but if they do, I'll be switching away. I really wish there was a social media equivalent to the kind of true audience portability that RSS and email provide. Mastodon and micro.blog Timelines come close enough but it's not quite the same thing.

@pratik Yes, a free account should be enough.

@pratik @manton @jean Adding my opinion into the mix since we're on the topic. I think micro.blog's website can make it clearer to people that there's a Free tier option. The Sign up process (understandably) focuses on having a hosted blog but perhaps there is room for improvement?

One area I can think of is that a micro.blog user profile doesn’t show the “Follow” button to users who don’t have an account, which are a majority! Most people I've shared my micro.blog profile link with are confused and don't realize that they need to sign up on micro.blog to follow me. Adding a follow button which leads to a (free) sign up page would be intuitive. And a natural way to attract users some of whom might eventually go paid.

@uncertainquark Agree. I, too, had a few curious people but didn't follow thru. As you noticed, currently, the register page opts you into the hosted Micro.blog plan for ten days as a free trial. It may be worth exploring to see if you first let new users create a free account to read and reply to existing users. I understand that MB is a business, but I'm hoping the reading and responding will make people want to pen down their own thoughts and thus be paying customers.

This is similar to Twitter's "punishment" when they restrict your account to "read-only." Sometimes it's tempting for me to try to break Twitter's rules to stop me from tweeting but continue reading 😆

@sod @manton @jean

@sod Thanks for pointing it out to me. Once you are signed in, it's difficult to get to that page.

@pratik @uncertainquark @jean @sod It's good to take another look at this to see what we can improve. Some background: the first version of Micro.blog did start you off with a free account! But we found it was confusing, and opting people into a real hosted blog made things much simpler. Free accounts are best for people who already have a blog and not really a good place to start.

@manton @uncertainquark @jean @sod Makes sense. But what if you ptich the free account or a version of it to people who don't yet have a blog or maybe don't want one? Maybe the interaction will make them get a blog and then MB will be like, guess what? We can set you up. If not and they want to only reply and read, that's great for the community too.

@uncertainquark I keep a follower page here: jgregorymcverry.com/following

Right now somebody "could" subscribe to my follower feed and get an update when i "follow" someone new. I could make each group it's own RSS feed....but their really isn't a metadata field in RSS so it just goes in the body.

It's manual till it hurts...as in sorely needs updating...but that avoids the vanity follows of say LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook

But you see who I follow not who follows me. Important distinction..and really more a sandbox than anything useful

@DoctorMac Neat page, thanks for sharing.

@uncertainquark apparently so! i hadn't thought of it like that 👀

@uncertainquark I understand why Medium. I disagree about WordPress. I can and have migrated entire WordPress.com websites to self-hosted WordPress and micro.blog. I don’t know any blog platform that allows one to “own followers”. Followers are not yours to own. There are issues with micro.blog that I think are undesirable.

@khurtwilliams @uncertainquark Thanks, I had forgotten about that “criticism” page… Needs to be updated because at least half of those points no longer apply.

@manton true.

@khurtwilliams I did say "owning the relationship with your audience" and not "owning your followers". I get that the latter sounds like a bad thing but there is nothing wrong with owning the connection to your followers. For example, if you move your blog or change its domain, redirecting your old RSS feed URL to the new one automatically means you're owning that connection. And that's a good thing because those subscribers won't be inconvenienced and you get to continue posting as usual. I don't need to know who those followers are, just as in RSS you really don't, but I do want a mechanism to ensure they stay along for the ride!

@uncertainquark @khurtwilliams It’s too bad there’s no easier way of redirecting URLs without having to keep it enabled indefinitely, unless there is and I’m missing something. Does redirecting also not cause longer load times?

@pimoore In my experience, redirects have never caused significantly longer load times on any platform. Also, many blogging platforms do have smart redirects for posts just like micro.blog does, and some URLs are common across platforms such as /feed. So other than manually adding your other URL redirects on every switch, there's not much effort. Have you had an experience otherwise?

@uncertainquark Luckily I’ve never had to set one up yet, but would you not have to keep the old domain around indefinitely and keep paying for it as a result?

@pimoore Yes, but people mostly seem to switch blogging platforms and not domains so the URL debt isn't huge. Sometimes it's a subdomain switch so wildcard redirects could work in that case. Personally I've only ever swithced the subdomain for my main blog once and it took only some manual effort to setup redirects. That said, what I also did is edit posts themselves to have links to the new subdomain—possible for not so old blogs and avoids the issue of keeping redirects alive forever.

@uncertainquark I have had one domain since 2005, but prior to that my blog was under a different domain. I exported the content, ran a script to update old domain links to new domain links, then re-imported all the prior content to the new website. I don't see any lock-in with WordPress.com at all. But I don't have to warn anyone about anything since I own my domain.

@khurtwilliams I never said there was a lock-in of content on Wordpress.com. Please re-read the post, I specifically lay down how there's a semi-lock-in with respect to owning the connection to your followers.

@uncertainquark, I read the post (three times now). Perhaps I misinterpreted your statement about WordPress.com.

My main issue is this: "Now, both platforms do provide email subscription options for your blog, meaning there’s an email followers list you can export any time. But it isn’t presented as a first class option to visitors. For example, for people logged into WordPress.com, the platform replaces the default email option with a “Follow” button, which is a separate list. Despite being the blog owner, you can’t export this list, and so those followers are tied to your blog being on WordPress forever."

Anyone with an email address, Twitter or Facebook account can comment on a WordPress.com blog. Those comments are exportable. Followers in WordPress.com are just people who use WordPress Reader to see your updates. I may be wrong, but as long as the domain does not change, those followers will still see your content updates even if you move to a new platform.

You can also export subscribers and WordPress.com Followers from one WordPress.com site to another or to a self-hosted WordPress.

So what do you mean by "semi-lockin"?

@khurtwilliams If I may interject, I think I know what @uncertainquark means when he says "semi-lockin". He is referring to WP.com's Reader feature. People on WP.com can "follow" other WP.com blogs much like you would on MB or even Twitter. They read these blogs in WP's Reader that I've heard can be a major source of referrals. But when you decide to leave WP.com, these readers will not be able to follow you unless they subscribe to your blog via RSS. They never really are exposed to the RSS feed if they click on "Follow" on WP.com.

I think MB also has a similar lock-in but slightly better. I can move my blog off MB but can then plug in my blog on a new platform's feed into MB for free and my regular MB readers will continue to read me.

@khurtwilliams Adding to what @pratik said and answering your specific query:

Followers in WordPress.com are just people who use WordPress Reader to see your updates. I may be wrong, but as long as the domain does not change, those followers will still see your content updates even if you move to a new platform. You can also export subscribers and WordPress.com Followers from one WordPress.com site to another or to a self-hosted WordPress. So what do you mean by "semi-lockin"?

Yes, you can export a Wordpress.com site Followers to another or a self-hosted WordPress. But that's only if you move between Wordpress sites. What if you move to Ghost or micro.blog or Substack? Those blog followers are then lost forever. As to why its a "semi-lockin" is because there are also email subscribers, which you can retain, but as I explained in the article the default email form is swapped for the follow button for all WP.com-logged-in users.

This is therefore unlike RSS redirects or email lists, where you truly own the connection to your audience.

@pratik But it does provide a nice design as an integrated reader and writer space when you come across two locked-in properties.

I have firends who do this on private hypothesis accounts, especially teachers. Outside of readers and such just a group private sidebar on a public website.