Mostly we should just write on our blogs json.blog
@jsonbecker I felt slightly better when people more technically smarter than me are confused. I guess if I had never heard of Micro.blog and was just on Mastodon, I would be fine. It’s when ActivityPub is mentioned along with Mastodon, things get confusing. I’m sure 99% of people on Mastodon have not heard about ActivityPub
@pratik yeah, but they run into it when they’re told to use things like Pixelfed and Lemmy and all this other stuff. I think too many people talk about Mastodon as not “twitter clone”. It’s a Twitter clone.
@jsonbecker it IS a Twitter clone. Pixelfed is an Instagram clone. Lemmy is a Reddit clone. That’s not a bad thing. If they talked about it that way, it would make sense.
@pratik yeah but they don’t and then talk about interop, which doesn’t work. And it obviously doesn’t work. I mean it kind of works, but then I see people constantly wondering why they can’t have a full, identical experience multiple places at once.
@jsonbecker it would have been great if you could follow Mastodon accounts in Micro.blog but your Micro.blog account wasn’t “follow-able” on Mastodon? I say this coz so many of other social networks features like seeing followers counts, likes, etc are deliberately kept (good) out of Micro.blog.
@jsonbecker yes, you need a home to call your own. Everything else is just Chad's garage. Amazing how little recognised this is.
@pratik I’m not sure I understand now. I have my account on MB followable on Mastodon. There’s no meaningful change in my experience as a result. I don’t check anything with that account separately and interact with it entirely on here as thought I’m interacting with other MB accounts.
@jsonbecker Guess that explains the confusion if I can’t even explain it without whiteboarding it. It would’ve been better if our Micro.blog was not follow-able on Mastodon unless it worked with the Mastodon API. That way we could have used one of the excellent third-party apps for Mastodon. But then, it would expose all features (like counts, follower counts, follow-back mentality, reposts, etc.) that Micro.blog deliberately keeps away from its social-network aspect.
How many people who host on Micro.blog DO NOT USE its timeline feature? All the pros I have heard about Micro.blog is mostly about the community and the timeline and less about its bread-n-butter hosting features.
@pratik see I completely disagree with your assertion. The ability for someone to follow my blog on Mastodon is great— they may not use RSS or MB but want to follow my posts and that’s a good option. I have no expectation I can use a third party social app designed around a specific service to use a completely different service that’s not meant to be a Twitter clone.
And I use MB almost entirely because it’s a good blog host. I had a Hugo block before and it was a pain to post to since I had to do git stuff to move text files around. I love that MB hosts my Hugo blog and lets me post from my phone way easier. The rest is nice, but I’d still pay $5 a month for hosting just for that.
@pratik I don’t really see any reason why there’s any tie between “someone on Mastodon can subscribe to read my posts” and “I can use Ivory with Micro.blog”— the fact that those are seen as equivalent versus totally separate desires and functions is so bizarre to me— but I see that sentiment enough that it’s clear to me my mental model is different than others.
I have no idea when someone uses Net News Wire or Reeder or Inoreader or Unread or Micro.blog to read my blog. Why would I not want to let them read it from Mastodon, care that they do, or would that have any implications about my own usage?
@jsonbecker Yes, in a way I completely agree. If I treat Micro.blog as a hosting provider and as a provider for the supplemental blogging services (bookmarks, importing other content via RSS feeds, bookshelves, etc.) and completely ignore the social and community aspects, I might be happier? I could just use a feed reader and interact with people that way. I’m sure Manton and Vincent would appreciate me not bombarding them with feature requests and community aspects that may not be their priority ☺️
@pratik but I don’t get what about the community is made problematic because folks can read my posts on Mastodon and reply to them from there, if I choose to let them? I guess what I’m entirely confused about is what you perceive as some major downside here.
@jsonbecker Ok. I guess I’m not articulating it properly. It comes down to having more choices than what I should be having. Let me think and write it up later.
@pratik @jsonbecker Just jumping in to say that I get the sense that some of us here are spoiled by the excellent choices of Mastodon client apps. I keep trying the official Micro.blog app and Gluon and on the iPad at least they're not a great experience, especially when compared to an app like Mona for Mastodon. So I end up back on the website which is, thankfully, excellent. I'm not sure why I feel drawn to using an app. I should just delete the two apps off my iPad and be content with the website!
@Denny @jsonbecker With enhanced support coming for web apps in iOS 17, I’m definitely going to try that.
@Denny @pratik the fact that the apps suck is orthogonal to the feature of publishing posts to Mastodon or cross posting. But just like Ivory can’t post to a Ghost or Wordpress blog and can’t be an RSS feeder, it’s not going to be a great Micro.blog app unless Micro.blog just decided to be entirely a social service on ActivityPub— which is very much explicitly not the goal.
@jsonbecker @denny So should Micro.blog get out of the business of developing the apps and building the community and focus only on the blog hosting part? The Discover page can simply be a page of examples of blogs that are hosted on Micro.blog. It would then avoid all expectations of being a social media platform.
@pratik I don’t see why if it continues to align to their goals and work well enough for most people. This conversation is happening on their apps. It wouldn’t happen without them. I’m glad it could happen. I’d be sad if it’s gone. But the apps are not as good as much larger efforts that are out there that are social first without any nod toward blogging/websites. Some of the limitations here come from the underlying blog tech. I’m comfortable with that trade off.
@jsonbecker @pratik Personally, I like the balance as far as micro.blog as a blog hosting service with a minimal social/community feed. Sure, there are parts of the conversations threading that could be improved, etc. But I definitely appreciate having the timeline. It's easy enough to ignore for folks that just want the blog hosting.
As for the apps, I hesitate to say simply because I think so little effort has been made in how they work on my primary device. I'm mostly content on the website. And to be clear, I'm speaking of the micro.blog apps as they relate to micro.blog both in terms of publishing, reading the timeline, etc. and specifically from the iPad. I've not used the apps much on the iPhone, not on the Mac at all. But on the iPad they seem to be an after thought. Example, on the iPad, view a post with a photo. LOL LOL LOL. if it's a landscape photo I have to scroll to the right to view the whole photo. If vertical I have to scroll down. Why not just display the full image 100% within the current window without making me scroll. Terrible.
In other words, simply as a client app dedicated to Micro.blog, they aren't great (on the iPad) and that's me trying to be nice. I certainly wouldn't miss the apps if they disappeared tomorrow.
@Denny I read 98% via Reeder. Love that I can read my feed where I read the rest of the web. Doesn’t mean apps can’t or shouldn’t get better— but Manton explicitly has an API and supports RSS and the like to take pressure off of the official app experience being the only experience. You might be much happier with an RSS reader as a feed experience.
@jsonbecker Ah, yes, RSS! I love RSS but I don't care much for my micro.blog timeline there. I do like Sod's implementation of the discovery timeline and wish the main timeline were available that way. I don't think it is. I like being able to jump right to a post to comment. As I recall, the standard timeline does not offer this option. Been awhile since I tried it but had tried it a couple times before and quit pretty quickly as it just seemed like a disjointed experience.
Editing to add: Yes, now I remember, my micro.blog feed in RSS is unusable because it's not possible (as far as I know) to just see original posts. It's posts+comments. Completely clutters up my RSS feed. Is there a way to just view my micro.blog timeline in RSS without comments?
@jsonbecker I’m breaking into this great conversation to ask how I can view my Mb timeline in Reeder or another RSS app. Can someone tell me where that feed is?
@joeross I think it’s just micro.blog/feeds/username.json — mine is micro.blog/feeds/jsonbecker.json
@Denny you can remove replies, but doing so will also remove replies from your feed in the app, I believe, because it’s an account-level setting, not specific to RSS.
Another option would be a filter on the RSS end. Feedbin offers powerful filters and it would be trivial to remove and/or mark as read posts that start with @.
@Denny as for jumping into replies— yeah, I don’t know why the feed doesn’t include something like the “reply on micro.blog” plug in for each post. Clutter? That said, my feed is not so fast that I find it hard to find a post in the app if I decide I want to reply. And I’m kind of happy with a little friction before I start talking at people.
@jsonbecker Thanks for the info. I actually posted about this to the help forum a few weeks back and Manton replied that while there currently isn't an option for this (a specific or dedicated RSS feed without comments) that it would make sense so maybe it's something that will be implemented one day. For now I think I'll just contiune reading via the website.
@Denny @jsonbecker I once again tried the option of reading it in a RSS reader. Actually clicking on the permalink for replies takes you to the web interface which is great. But for posts, it takes you to their blog which is fine if they have Sod’s conversation plugin installed. Otherwise there’s no way to reply.
@jsonbecker Though I agree with your larger point, timeline is a big aspect of micro.blog as Pratik said. And unfortunately, official ways to follow a timeline on mobile are not the best out there. Interop is useless if it doesn't allow the choice of primary service.
I should write on my blog, yes. And I do. But I also want to evaluate other services. If we didn't ask and push for a change, it may not happen. Worst case, I will understand the core better.
@amit I don’t have any understanding what the interop problem is. Based on your user name, I can tell this came from Mastodon. It came to my MB, and I can reply here and it goes to you. That’s pretty much what was promised and seems great. You prefer to read my posts from there and can. I even use two methods (I cross post as well). That’s cool for me. My blog and writing can be read from wherever you want. And if you want to reply, I offer several methods to do so, including native replies from the platform you’re reading on.
Seems to be working great to me.
@amit I have a full on separate account for many other services. On ones that support it, I get to auto post my blog there. I don’t have to live on one service, but my core home is MB because I own it and it makes using other services easier.
@jsonbecker The fact that I need to have a separate Mastodon account when I already have a micro.blog provided Mastodon one tells me interop is just one way currently.
I also understand why it is the way it is - they are not fully compatible systems. The promise though continues to exist.
@amit I don’t know what causes you need to or want to have a separate account— I have one too for my own reasons— but my point is we’re interoperating seamlessly right now. The promise that you can read and reply to my blog from other places and I can take part in that conversation works seamlessly. What I can’t figure out other than “use other apps” (which is not remotely that simple, because of intentional functional mismatches) is why this is confusing, problematic, etc. Why is this feature not even worth having or turning on? This conversation is a great example of that feature meeting its goals.
@amit also, you don’t have a micro.blog provided Mastodon account. Your micro.blog account can be subscribed to by people using ActivityPub compatible services and you can subscribe to ActivityPub streams as well. And each side can do replies. That’s not what Mastodon is— which is a completely separate service that can do those things as a subset of its functions. Micro.blog interoperating and using a standard is not “Micro.blog has provided you with a Mastodon account”.
@pratik Ha! The community is an added benefit, but what really drew me in is that mb seems to be around the POSSE concept.