I made a post on Sunday, and it triggered a nice stream of comments from people on micro.blog, all of which appeared as comments on my post. Cool! It looks like the webmention support on both ends is working well. As another step in WordPress/micro.blog integration, I am adding my comments RSS feed as a cross-posted feed. After I post this, I will add a comment and see if that appears on micro.blog. Let’s see what happens!
Blogging
There are 96 posts filed in Blogging (this is page 10 of 10).
Bryan Alexander: I Defy The World and Go Back to RSS – Bryan describes how he return to using a RSS reader (although he describes the Digg Reader, which has shut down). I use River5 from Dave Winer with a single page app for reading my feeds.
Aaron Davis: Laying the standards for a blogging renaissance – Chris Aldrich also replies
Chris Aldrich: Plans and Thoughts for IndieWeb Summit – Chris’ ideas for sessions and what he wants to do at IndieWeb Summit.
Aral Balkan: Reclaiming RSS – how to make your RSS feed more visible.
Why praise Micro.blog?
My friend, John Philpin, responded (https://beyondbridges.net/2018/06/in-praise-of-micro-blog/) to my question about using Micro.blog (what makes it more than just another blogging service), and to me his response in a nutshell is “community”. One of the features of Micro.blog is the ability to find other Micro.blog users using the Discover /Users page (https://micro.blog/discover/users), then to “follow” them after selecting a user (a la Twitter), then seeing the posts of those users in the Timeline (a la Twitter), being able to respond quickly to them (a la Twitter), and creating Mentions by using the username of the user (a la Twitter). To me, this is the “killer feature” of Micro.blog. The posting abilities are pretty standard (editing, linking, etc.).
Perhaps another “killer feature” is that the Micro.blog staff perform curation and enforce community guidelines (http://macgenie.micro.blog/2018/04/10/a-guide-to.html), which results in higher signal-to-noise ratio for postings and conversations. I started this year with a goal of making some type of post every day, even if it was just a link. That lasted about six weeks, so I am trying to “get back in the saddle again” through this post.
I tend to use RSS for tracking posts of people I am interested in (my reading list page (http://readinglist.andysylvester.com/) is an example), and then engage as I see interesting posts. I can follow the posters at Micro.blog through RSS, and do follow a few people I know (John Philpin, Ron Chester, Frank McPherson). Sometimes I feel my reading time is limited, and this reading list gives me a single place to go to follow the people that interest me.
So, should I praise Micro.blog? As a service, it is still somewhat new. However, it appears to have attracted a number of followers, and has a possibly sustainable business model through hosting support. I think it deserves the opportunity to demonstrate how blogging can facilitate community through services paid for by users, and welcoming those (like myself) who are posting from afar…