July 2026

There was one post published in July 2026.

What are the attributes of a “social platform”?

On June 28, 2026, Dave Winer put out a call for social web app developers to work with him if they are including inbound and outbound RSS in their apps. Manton Reece from Micro.blog referenced this in a post on Micro.blog, and had this statement: “I’m actually not aware of any social platforms that support inbound RSS except Micro.blog. It would be great to have more.”. Dave Winer then responded on Micro.blog as follows (partial quote):

I want a world of social platforms that support inbound RSS

Those two posts caught my eye, specifically the word “platform”. Why did they choose the word “platform”? That made me wonder – is this really a call for “centralized” services like Bluesky/Mastodon to add inbound RSS (to allow users to post within these services as “first class citizens” (as if they were posting within official apps for Bluesky/Mastodon))? In earlier comments on this topic, I wrote:

I have addressed this second objection before, stating “What is in it for the “other people’s software developers to add inbound and outbound RSS support”? My answer is – nothing – no users are demanding this – no users are clamoring for a RSS-based “social network” that can communicate as a peer with other social network software.

I had developed a web app in 2023 called MyStatusTool, and this app allows users to follow RSS feeds that support rssCloud (inbound RSS) and allows the user to create their own posts with a feed (outbound RSS). However, I had not thought about the following/display of other RSS feeds as “inbound RSS” until now.

I created this app because back in 2022, Dave Winer kept talking about creating an app that could do this, but he did not actually do anything about it, so I decided to do it! The one feature this app does not have is support for replies/following threads, which “platforms” like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Micro.blog support. Perhaps that is a key “attribute” of a “social platform”….

From recent posts, I am aware that Dave Winer is “working on something” with RSS and rssCloud to create some chat application. Hope he releases it soon! Hope it has inbound and outbound RSS!