| Micro.blog | |
|---|---|
| Original author | Manton Reece |
| Initial release | 24 April 2017 |
| Type | Social news |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | micro |
Micro.blog is amicroblogging andsocial networking service created by Manton Reece.[1] It is the first large multi-usersocial media service to support theWebmention andMicropub standards published by theWorld Wide Web Consortium,[2] and is part of theFediverse, supportingActivityPub.
Micro.blog has features similar toTwitter orInstagram,[3] and provides for posting status updates, articles, photos, short podcasts, and video.[4][5] Micro.blog also supports long-form blogging.[6][7]
It was launched on April 24, 2017, after aKickstarter campaign that reached its funding target within one day.[8][9] The service was built usingJekyll, but later transitioned toHugo.[10] Users can post using hosted accounts or importRSS feeds from other self-hosted blogs to syndicate them into the network from other websites they run. Users can also import their posts from Twitter,WordPress,Tumblr, and the defunct microblogging serviceApp.net.Some of the Kickstarter Campaign rewards involved access to a book on Indie Microblogging that Reece committed to writing. A full draft of this now exists[11] (as of 2022-12-22) and is publicly available.
The web hosting serviceDreamHost supported Micro.blog's Kickstarter campaign,[12] and announced their intent to help customers create independent microblogs hosted at DreamHost that are compatible with Micro.blog.[13]
Micro.blog encourages users to publish under their own domain as part of itssupport for theIndieWeb[14] "POSSE" principles[15]—Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. This publishing model involves the end user posting content to their own domain name based site first, then using web standards to syndicate to multiple other social networks and platforms.[16]
Micro.blog supports syndication (referred as cross-posting on Micro.blog) to several locations:Day One,Flickr,LinkedIn,Mastodon,Medium,[17][18]Nostr,PeerTube,Pixelfed,Threads, andTumblr.[citation needed]
It also supports importing from data exported from WordPress,[19] and supports cross-posting from Instagram to micro.blog.[20]
Micro.blog eschews many ofthe common features ofTwitter and othermicroblogging platforms.For example, Micro.blog does not showfollower counts,[21][14] does not havehashtags,[22][23][5][24]public likes[21][14]or trending topics,[23]does not have equivalents ofretweeting[21][23][25][14]or quote tweeting,does not algorithmically recommend users and likeMastodon, and does not have full-text searchas part of the service[24]or client apps. Reece says in his book:"It mirrors a philosophy we have with Micro.blog to launch without followercounts or public likes."[21]
Unusually, for a social network, Micro.blog's first full time employeewas a Community Manager,Jean Macdonald,[1]who—among other things—produces a hand-curated "Discover" section onMicro.blog.
Reece explains some of this in his book, saying:"I think more social networks should do things that don’t scale,prioritizing safety over profit. For example, in Micro.blog thefeatured posts in Discover are curated by humans instead ofalgorithms."[25]
He also writes:
Micro.blog doesn't make it particularly easy to discover new users, and posts don't spread virally. While some might view this as a weakness, and it does mean we grow more slowly than other social networks, this is by design. No retweets, no trending hashtags, no unlimited global search, and no algorithmic recommended users.
Micro.blog limits search and avoids public likes and reposts so that the snowball starts small and stays small. Instead of going viral and becoming a major problem, fake accounts can be spotted early and shut down if necessary.[25]
In 2017, Manton Reece, an IndieWeb developer based in Austin, Texas, launched a Kickstarter for a service called Micro.blog. On its surface, Micro.blog looks a lot like Twitter or Instagram; you can follow users and see their posts sorted into a time line, and, if you like a post, you can send a reply that everyone can see. When I checked Micro.blog's public time line recently, the top post was a picture of a blooming dogwood tree, with the caption "Spring is coming!" Even as it offers a familiar interface, though, everyone posting to Micro.blog does so on his or her own domain hosted on Micro.blog's server or on their own personal server. Reece's software acts as an aggregator, facilitating a sense of community and gathering users' content so that it can be seen on a single screen. Users own what they write and can do whatever they want with it—including post it, simultaneously, to other competing aggregators. IndieWeb developers argue that this system—which they call posse, for "publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere"—encourages competition and innovation while allowing users to vote with their feet. If Reece were to begin aggressively harvesting user data, or if another service were to start offering richer features, users could shift their attention from one aggregator to another with little effort. They wouldn't be trapped on a platform that owns everything they've written and is doing everything it can to exploit their data and attention.