The grass is always greener on the other side. Pretty often I see Micro.blog people explore other blogging platforms, or just post more to Mastodon, but it almost always leads to blogging less often. This is both discouraging and also sort of a testament that the Micro.blog way works.
@manton I think it’s good for a blogging platform (esp. making it easy to have custom domain, feeds, etc…), but for me personally I basically used it as mainly as a fediverse account and ultimately an Mastodon instance was better for me.
That said, I still think Micro.blog is really cool and a good way to lower the bar to entry for blogging.
Also good to hve an smaller blog provider as opposed to the big commercial (blogger) or even medium ones like substack, etc.
@manton I'm here for my eighth year, give or take a few breaks. Between hobby, work, and that weird hobby-work line I am determined to do, and anticipating more blogging — different ideas, more advanced sites, etc — and with Micro.blog already have more than enough tools at my disposal to fulfil my needs.
I'm looking forward to the coming year. Got a lot more I am going to say about this, and blogging, and the web in general.
@manton Since you can federate to Mastodon anyway, that makes no sense to me. But I do understand curiousity about other other platforms. I've been fiddling around with Jekyll, because that's how I am, but the utility you have provided here - blogging, video/photo, and especially easy podcasting, plus support of your mission here, make my other experiments just that - experiments. The Bookshelf feature here is amazing. As a librarian and reader, I find that amazingly refreshing. It really speaks to me. Also, it scratches that old punk skater itch in me...
@manton I think it's less about Micro.blog and more about the type of users it attracts. In general, most of us here are tinkerers and are always trying out new things, especially to do with blogging. I complain and demand features and bug fixes. I have been here since 2017 and don't intend to leave (maybe check out but never leave 🎶), but that doesn't make me less curious about what's out there, especially in these times when a thousand flowers are blooming. Heck, Bluesky is keeping Threads on their toes in terms of features and UX.
But I disagree about "blogging less often" if on Mastodon. Is micro-blogging, not blogging? Does blogging mean you need to have a longer post with a title and categories? I follow several people on Mastodon who post long threads that are often more in-depth and illuminating than an average "macro" post I write. Maybe they don't feel the need to "own their content" (and I have asked some about it). They may eventually back it up somewhere, but Mastodon is their blog, and thousands of people read it. I mostly blog for and about myself but tons of people put out knowledge/wisdom/experiences in whatever form they see as most convenient. At least Mastodon is non-profit and ad-free.
Apologies for the long reply, but I hopped over to Micro.blog to write this instead of Mastodon since Micro.blog still allows me to have long replies :) Maybe I should make this a blog post, but then again, this reply is a post too, IMO.
@manton I’m a boomeranger by nature and inclination but I like a lot of what’s happening here at a time when I’m looking for less noisy places to post that aren’t a complete vacuum.
@pratik Thanks for the long support. I agree that many Micro.blog users have high standards and always want to see if there's something better. That is a good thing! For the blogging, when I said "blogging" I really mean "blogging at your domain name". For people who want something more ephemeral on someone else's Mastodon server, that's fine, although I think some people will regret it later.
@manton In principle, I agree with you, and that's what I am doing for myself. But after a while, people are wise to make their own decisions. From us readers of their blog perspective, would I miss reading them if I didn't read them on their non-domain-blog? If the answer is yes, then I'll go where they are.
PS. I was talking about Adrianna Tan, who was on Micro.blog a few months ago.
@manton what I find weird about being here is how great UX is in some aspects and how burried are some features. I'm tech savvy, can find my way around, but I don't want to write custom code or edits to themes for basic things (reassign home page, only show long posts but not replies/short posts, etc).
@pratik @manton I don't agree that Mastodon accounts or Bluesky accounts or Thread accounts are blogs. It's ok for folks to not want blogs if that works for them, but I do think that's a distinction, and in fact, not actually wanting a blog or valuing a blog is part of what leads to abandonment of Micro.blog in favor of a crossposter like Croissant. Micro.blog centers a blog, and if that's not valuable to you, it's not going to work. I'm thinking a lot about say, podcasters who are using social media to promote other work. They just don't feel the need or want to have a blog, they're truly just posting ephemeral promotional stuff to lots of places.
This is why I like the name of Micro.blog having blog in the name-- there's an immediate fork in the road for whether it will work for you which is "do you want a blog?" if no, look elsewhere.
@jsonbecker @pratik I think that's right. The original premise was whether we could encourage more blogging and content ownership by borrowing good ideas from social platforms. Clearly yes. Some people don't want that, no problem. But some people just need a little encouragement or the right platform, and if they "blog" on someone's Mastodon server, they'll ultimately be disappointed. That's who we want.
@manton Like I said, I agree in principle with it, and I won't use Croissant until they support posting to Micro.blog (although I was tempted to first post (short posts) to Mastodon and have its RSS feed imported to Micro.blog) even though I love its UI/UX (important for me). But if I put my evangelist hat on, the term 'blog' turns off newer users who never 'blogged' before Twitter. I prefer 'writing' (text) or 'creating' (non-text) instead of 'blogging,' or more so with 'content', so I wish there were another term for 'blog' other than the very generic 'website.'
they "blog" on someone's Mastodon server, they'll ultimately be disappointed
They may very well be but they don't see the long-term benefit right now.
Tangentially, although not the same, I think the Democratic Party faces the same dilemma as Micro.blog 🙃
@manton @manton I go back and forth between posting to Micro.blog and relying on internal automated cross-posting tools, vs. posting to Mastodon/Bluesky natively alongside Micro.blog. Lately I'm posting threads to Masto and bsky manually and then thinking of Micro.blog as an archive.
I am now rethinking this process after reading your post, because my current way of doing it is more work and I don't know if it's getting me more benefit in terms of being more likely to be read.
Like @ptratik says — I'm a tinkerer but I have essentially zero coding skills, which stops me getting the full benefit of Micro.blog. Maybe I ought to learn to code (as the saying goes, I can do that in my copious free time)(being ironic here. I don't seem to have much free time at all.)
I expect the fediverse, Bluesky and Micro.blog will all evolve to make integration between the three platforms easier and more fluid. I love seeing apps like Surf, the new Reeder, Tapestry and feeeed that converge all the streams into one.
@manton I think micro.blog may be unique in still supporting both long and short posts. It’s really hard to find good themes for other platforms that support short, headline free posts. Some don’t support headline free posts at all.
The blogging world seems to have bifurcated between long form and social media-focused short form. It’s nice to have both in one place.
@adders Thank you. That does seem right… WordPress, Ghost, Squarespace all designed for long-form now.
@manton There will always be a vocal group of people who enjoy jumping back and forth between systems with the justification that something new/different will make everything better. It’s the digital form of buying a new notebook or ditching the computer for an iPad.
Tinkerers are gonna tinker.
Micro.blog is a great platform with thoughtful opinions on what it does and how it does it. It also is truly unique in playing well with other services, functioning like a real citizen of the Internet and not another walled garden of the moment.
The improvements I’d love to see are better surfacing of the things it already does do and making them easier and more accessible.
I'm a tinkerer but I have essentially zero coding skills, which stops me getting the full benefit of Micro.blog.
Is that right? I am in your camp re skills.. there definitely things I want to do .. but don’t because code .. but that is more to do with extending than using micro.blog
Much more effort should go into reducing friction of starting .. there is weird stuff that almost makes sense to me because I have been here so long .. but still I am no aware of anything that is a microblog benefit that I need to code for .. now I am worried that I am missing something 😳
@manton Yup. Much as I also like Ghost, one of my frustrations with it and the ecosystem is that there are no themes that give you an “old style” blog, where you can read all posts on the home page. I’m sure one could be coded, but I’m no web designer.
@JohnPhilpin I just get ideas for customizing and extending crossposting which I completely lack the skills to implement.
And Micro.blog's great strength is its minimal friction to get started. You can start a blog in minutes. And there's also minimal friction to posting — it's as easy as Twitter used to be, or BlueSky or Mastodon still is. Easier, because Micro.blog does not have Twitter/BSky/Masto's silly length limitation. A post can be as long or short as you want it to be.
One of my favorite Micro.blog features is that titles are completely optional. As Evan Williams (Twitter, Blogger, Medium co-founder) has noted, the simple act of writing a title can be a source of significant friction.
