Effectively no one knows how good Micro.blog is for blogging. I alternate between being bummed out by this and optimistic that there is so much room for growth. Might take a few more years for overnight success to hit.
@manton I'm a big fan of M.b and I know I'm likely not the target customer... however, it not being a full player in ActivityPub and not having likes, etc. is one thing that may hold people back. But I realize you very purposely omitted those features and I'm sure you'll win in the long run and have the exact community you want there.
@manton I regret hosting my blog on WP and just need to find time to migrate it to Micro. Then maybe I’ll post more often. 🤣
@manton i feel like i'm pretty plugged into the internet and have been writing on the web for decades, and i just learned of MB a few months ago. and yes! it's so good! i wonder how you might tell this story?
@manton It took me a long time to catch up to it. I was an original Kickstarter but couldn't figure out at the time how it met my needs. When I finally wanted to get my blog off WP last year + centralize my social media activity, lo and behold, there it was, waiting for me.
@mccarron We're here when you're ready. 🙂 I do think people post more often when it's easy to start a short post and then optionally scale it up to a full-length post. That is a big part of the original goal.
@manton I find it to be about the best platform, for my needs at least. I think you and the team have done amazing so far. I think one of the big things that may hold people back is the theme selection. Not many of us are savvy enough to build our own and I feel some more selection is needed.
@jinscho Thanks! I know I need to work on telling the story, but I'm not really sure how to be honest, other than chipping away at making things better and blogging about it. We've tinkered with advertising and need to do more.
@cjhubbs Thanks for the support. Micro.blog is also way better than it was at the Kickstarter. 6-7 years of improvements.
@manton to go back to the popularity, I saw a thing about Ghost getting activity pub integration the other day. MicroBlog has had that and a gazillion other features for ages... but your not out advertising yourself. The word of mouth growth game is just a bit slower.
@manton I started blogging with PostNuke, got hacked, and switched to WP. I used WP for years until it got dramatic so I switched to PostHaven, which I used for several years and have now moved to MB and I don't regret it in the slightest. PH is great, but has some frustrating limitations, though I do love the fact that since I've paid for years that they'll retain access effectively "forever" (whatever that means these days). I now can't see ever going to back to WP or PH, or any other platform, for that matter. Thanks @manton!
I will echo the issue noted by @timapple and would, as a non-coder, appreciate a simpler, more complete theming experience. For example, I can't figure out how to format a little code that puts links to posts I've tagged as "featured" in my Tiny sidebar. I've never had a propensity for programming, so learning to code to accomplish this makes this, for me at least, essentially unachievable.
@manton i feel that this space is very diverse and distributed. But it's hard to trust many managed platforms. Just saw that Proseful closed down. Micro.blog seems a great bet because of your history of executing and the Hugo under the hood (so people can always exit, which, paradoxically, ensures they won't).
@manton I want Micro.blog to be more popular, but I am also afraid that if you hit the spotlight and lots of people descend, managing it might be difficult for you. There's precedent of other services (Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) that managed to scale up, but both ultimately had to sell out to the (same) tech giant. I just hope that doesn't happen.
@manton Overcast has, by most credible estimates, between 1–2% of the podcast-app market.
You can build a pretty good business on effectively no one if it’s the right no-ones.
@manton I started this work years ago too and never finished. Love the post scaling Micro offers you said.
@marcoarment Thanks. That’s a great reminder. And too much success creates new problems, of course.
@manton I absolutely love the community aspect of MB and while I want overnight success to hit for you, losing that community feel would be losing one of the best parts of this platform. As for me, and I know I've brought this up before, my major hesitation is not knowing how to engage people who aren't on MB or Mastodon: they can get my posts via RSS or even Email, but they can't comment or contribute to the conversation like they can on WP either via the comment form or even as just an Email reply. Of course the tradeoff is that WP has gotten so complicated that blogging has become more of a chore than a joy. Maybe I just need to step back, stop over-thinking everything, and refocus on making this fun for me again, that would very likely lead me back here. :)
@manton do you remember that podcast interview you did where the hosts were blown away by all the features you'd packed in? Micro.blog is the Swiss army knife of blogging and social.
@manton Don't bother with advertising. Focus on identifying what makes users recommend micro.blog, and thendouble down on that. Personal recommendations are cheaper and way more viral. Activities like the photoblog challenges are great. Participants promote the platform without even trying
@manton If you want to get the word out, you need marketing and PR. I can help you with that (no charge — I like the platform and I want it to succeed). I do this for a living; see my LinkedIn profile. OTOH, if you want to continue organic growth, that's fine too.