Late last year, I did some experiments with MyStatusTool to test use of async function calls to eliminate some startup errors I was seeing. Next, I did some tests of my ability to follow WordPress.com feeds. Eventually, I saw that I was not properly parsing the RSS server domain and path from the feeds. My prior setup had been for feeds using a separate rssCloud server for notification. The WordPress.com feeds use each WordPress site as the cloud server, so there is variation in the server URL. Now that has been worked out, my next step is update my startup logic to read the feeds, then parse the RSS server domain and path information. I may need to do more experiments with async programming again to get these steps to execute in a synchronous manner. See example installs here and here!
MyStatusTool
There are 36 posts filed in MyStatusTool (this is page 1 of 4).
Taking another look at social networks and RSS
Today, Dave Winer wrote “What if you made a social network out of RSS?”. He then basically described a feed reader interface, and used examples from Bluesky and Twitter. However, I think that an important point of what people think of as “social networks” was overlooked or omitted. If you look at the Bluesky/Twitter examples, you can see that someone posts, and then replies are shown. I do not think that the “timeline viewer” that Dave Winer is “teasing” in recent posts is going to show or allow replies. The development of WordLand and its Baseline theme does not support comments or replies.
During the development of MyStatusTool, my collaborator Colin Walker proposed a namespace to allow replies via RSS. Perhaps this could be a stepping stone to supporting replies, and therefore conversations, via RSS. Just having a feed reader isn’t having a conversation, and isn’t particularly social. For other tools in this space, see my site The Feed Network.
I have used stock WordPress as a linkblogging tool (used a category). I also have a nice tool for linkblogging (see demo here). I also have a Hugo-based linkblog. No lack of options!
I have created some posts on my thoughts about WordLand on my WordLand test blog, including social networks built on RSS – check it out if you are interested.
Dave Winer again talks about twitter-like apps using RSS. I created mine (MyStatusTool) in May 2023, and Colin Walker created a PHP version (PHP-MST). Working versions are here and here. When is Dave Winer going to create his tool?
Call for Twitter-like systems based on feeds
Dave Winer again calls for “a twitter-like system built with feeds, with all their limits”. In May 2023, I created My Status Tool (Github repo) using Node.js that provides the basic posting and reading functionality within Twitter, but using RSS and rssCloud as the enabling technologies. Colin Walker also created a PHP implementation (Github repo), and our two versions were able to interop. Dave also called for this back in December 2023 (my response), but from what I heard, Dave had some other ideas besides working with MyStatusTool. I don’t think that FeedLand is the system he was talking about, and I don’t think that Blogroll Social is the system either. Anyone interested in working on this?
On the topic of link blogs
There has been some discussion somewhere this month on the Web (although I cannot find it) of a new list or lists of link blogs. Brad Enslen noted earlier this month that he sees an increase of link blogs in his browsing. The discussion of linkblogging has been going on for a long time (see this Manton Reece post form 2016 as an example). I have a Links category on my website (with its own feed), so someone could follow just the links part of my website. It is a simple thing to do in WordPress, as well as most other weblog tools. I also have another blogging tool (MyStatusTool) which is well suited to use as a link blog and has its own feed. Of course, there are many ways to publish a link blog, but why not get started with the tools you have at hand? As I mentioned recently, we have great tools available – let’s create some great things! Start blogging those links!
Open letter to Dave Winer’s call to develop feed-based social media apps
On December 3, Dave Winer published a “call to develop” for a feed-based social media app (he mentioned Mastodon in his post, but could be any social media app out there in my opinion). Sounds great to me! I have a feed-based app using rssCloud for notification called MyStatusTool (link to Github repo and my install). It is implemented using Node.js, Express, and Embedded Javascript for templating. It inspired Colin Walker to develop a PHP implementation of the tool (Github repo, his install). We were able to use our tools to interop with each other (have a real-time conversation), and to follow other feeds using rssCloud for notification. I have tested my implementation with the rssCloud user feeds from FeedLand and WordPress.com in addition to Colin Walker’s MyStatusTool implementation, and verified the real-time performance (new posts showed up almost immediately).
Now, is MyStatusTool a fully-developed thing? Nope! It’s a bootstrap. It does use a number of Node packages developed by Dave Winer for feed generation and feed reading, and uses Andrew Shell’s rssCloud server for notification, so I think it falls into the “working together” category that Dave Winer wrote about in 2015: “When you have a choice, instead of re-inventing someone else’s work, use it.”
I am ready to work for interop with whatever Dave develops. I don’t have any illusion that MyStatusTool is the epiphany of feed-based social media tools, but I developed it to see if one could be developed, and it spawned another implementation, so I think that is pretty cool. Let’s get busy and see what happens!
Was able to get the text of a previous post into the MyStatusTool editor window, but had tags appear in the post. Did some experimenting, then I could not decode the HTML entities – frustrating!
Dave Winer is musing about a lightweight social network. As Colin Walker and I have mentioned, I think that MyStatusTool would be a great fit (rssCloud for notification, can be used for small groups)! Dave has blocked me in most forums – can someone tell him about it?