👓 You’re Not Cool Enough For Micro.blog | Greg Morris

Read You’re Not Cool Enough For Micro.blog by Greg Morris (Greg Morris)
It’s become a bit of a running joke amongst my tech friends. A personal meme that I keep repeating the same sort of phase when questioned about a whole range of topics. Anything from GDPR to Social Media harassment my answer – micro.blog. Many people don’t understand. I’ve tried and failed t...
Micro.blog can certainly be many things to many people–possibly too many. In large part, what it is depends on what tools you’re bringing into it and how you’d like to use it.

It can be:

  • a web host
  • a Twitter replacement
  • a Twitter client that allows you to own your own data
  • a Instagram replacement
  • a microcasting platform
  • a full blogging platform
  • a new, well-curated community with a strong code of conduct
  • a customized feed reader for a new community
  • a syndication platform for one’s personal blog
  • a low barrier entryway to having your own IndieWeb-capable blog on your own domain.
  • a first class IndieWeb citizen with support for multiple types of posts, IndieAuth, Webmention, Micropub, and Microsub.

Because I already have my own domain, my own hosting, and my own website, I personally use it to syndicate my content into an interesting community of individuals which I’d like to engage. I use the main interface as a feed reader to see what others are up to and to communicate with them directly. My site supports Webmention so comments to my posts on micro.blog come right back to my site and provide me notifications there.

Perhaps micro.blog ought to make a chart for a variety of potential users to indicate what they would potentially be bringing with them and then have an indicator what they might use it for with those particular tools? Because of the arrays of technologies that micro.blog supports, it’s far from a simple  marketing problem, particularly to a non-technical crowd. You certainly can’t say it’s “just” a Twitter replacement because Twitter only supports a small fraction of what micro.blog is capable.

Published by

Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

7 thoughts on “👓 You’re Not Cool Enough For Micro.blog | Greg Morris”

  1. @c That’s an interesting point, how to de-complexify all the flexibility available, without at the same time papering over the flexibility.

    I think it would be good if we could at least get a few articles for the wiki that explain a few of the common usage types. /cc @eli

  2. @c That bullet pointed list is perfect. I also like the idea of a punch list. Maybe also some guides: you want a full fledged blog, do this; you want full Indieweb, do this; you’re coming from Facebook, this will help; you’re coming from Twitter… etc.

  3. john says:

    Liked  @c, @chrisaldrich Chris Aldrich’s great list of micro.blog purposes. Micro.blog has been difficult to describe. At the moment I am not using it as a replacement service for twitter or Instagram but in addition to or a way of owning and enriching these services.

  4. john says:

    Liked  @c, @chrisaldrich Chris Aldrich’s great list of micro.blog purposes. Micro.blog has been difficult to describe. At the moment I am not using it as a replacement service for twitter or Instagram but in addition to or a way of owning and enriching these services.

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