ThreadReaderApp now has beta support for the Micropub Spec so you can publish Twitter threads directly to your blog

So… a while back I tweeted about a bit of functionality I’ve long thought would be a cool one to have for Twitter:

I would often see people post tweetstorms, long threads of related tweets, to tell an extended story.

Invariably people see these threads and say “Why don’t/didn’t you just post that on your website as a blog post instead?”

(In fact, why don’t you try it on this very tweet?)

I’ve personally been using the #IndieWeb concept of P.O.S.S.E. (Post on your Own Site and Syndicate Elsewhere) for a while now. I’ll post my content on my personal website first and only then syndicate a copy to Twitter.
indieweb.org/POSSE

But today, for the first time in a very LONG time, I’m posting this particular thread to Twitter first…

Then when I’m done, I’ll roll it all up conveniently using the awesome @ThreadReaderApp which will put a nice readable version on their site.

Presto!

Blogpost, right??

Sadly, I don’t own that copy…

It really needs to be on my blog for that to work, right?!

“But wait. There’s more.” as they say in advertising.

Now with the help of @ThreadReaderApp, and the Micropub plugin for #WordPress, I’ll be able to view my thread on ThreadReader in a brand new bonus feature that’s currently in beta. Screencapture of ThreadReaderApp site featuring a button labeled

Yes, you guessed it! It’s that wondrous “Publish to Blog” button!!

With a quick click, @ThreadReaderApp will authenticate and I can authorize it to publish to my WordPress site on my behalf.

I can now publish the entire thread to my own website!!

Now this thread that I’ve published to Twitter will live forever archived on my own website as its own stand-alone blogpost.

Huzzah!!

I’m not sure how often I’m prone to do this in the future, but I hope we won’t hear that “Why didn’t you just post that on your own website as a blogpost?” as frequently.

With just a button push, I’ll be able to quickly and simply cross-post my Twitter threads on Twitter directly to my website!
#OwnYourData

In #IndieWeb terminology this publishing workflow is known as P.E.S.O.S. or Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate to Your Own Site.
indieweb.org/PESOS

I’ll mention for the masses that this publishing functionality is only possible courtesy of a W3C recommendation (aka web standard) known as Micropub.
indieweb.org/Micropub

Because it’s a web standard, @ThreadReaderApp can build the functionality once & it should work on dozens of platforms including @WordPress @Drupal @WithKnown @CraftCMS @Jekyllrb @GetKirby @GoHugoIO @MicroDotBlog among a growing set of others.
indieweb.org/Micropub/Serve…

Some of these may have built-in or core support for the standard while others may require a simple plugin or module to support this functionality.

Don’t see your platform supported yet? Ask your CMS or platform provider to provide direct support.

It shouldn’t take much work for @Ghost @grabaperch @squarespace @Wix @getgrav @magento @typo3 @Blogger @medium @Tumblr @mediawiki @omeka and others to support this too.

There’s lots of open source implementations already out there in various languages and there’s a fantastic test suite available for developers.

I’ll also give a quick shout out to @iAWriter which also just added Micropub support to let people use their editor to post to their websites.

And of course once you’ve realized that your platform supports Micropub to publish to your website, why not try out one of the dozens of other Micropub clients out there?
indieweb.org/Micropub/Clien…

They support a variety of post or content types from full articles to photos and geolocation to bookmarks. The sky’s the limit.

Some of my favorites are Quill, OwnYourSwarm, Omnibear, and Teacup. And let’s not forget social feed readers like Monocle and Indigenous that let you read and respond to content directly in your feed reader! (I no longer miss Google Reader, now I just feel sorry for them.)

Congratulations again to @ThreadReaderApp for helping to lead the way in the corporate social space for support of the awesomeness that Micropub allows.

Thread away!

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.

48 thoughts on “ThreadReaderApp now has beta support for the Micropub Spec so you can publish Twitter threads directly to your blog”

  9. In het verleden heb ik mijn twijfel geschreven over threads op Twitter zie. Waarom post je dit (ook) niet op je eigen blog? Er zijn auteurs die er een expertise van maken om uitgebreide threads te posten. Het is dan zo zonde om dit niet op een eigen moederschip terug te vinden. Waar het een langer leven kan hebben, beter vindbaar en linkbaar is.
    Al tijden zijn er gespecialiseerde diensten om Twitter threads samen te vatten op één pagina of zelfs als PDF te downloaden. ThreadReaderApp is zo’n dienst. En laten zij nu een nieuwe service in beta hebben, als ik de blogpost (en thread!) van Chris Aldrich lees. Dankzij een webstandaard die door het indieweb is ontwikkeld, kun je straks je Twitter thread via ThreadReaderApp direct op je eigen blog posten. Fantastisch!
    Zo haal je het beste uit beide werelden. Je kunt op Twitter direct feedback krijgen van je publiek, je hebt het voordeel van het netwerkeffect. Maar je verhaal blijft niet in de silo van het netwerk. Je kunt via Micropub deze direct op je eigen site doorplaatsen. Hoe Micropub werkt voor WordPress leg ik in deze handleiding uit.
    Helaas heb ik geen toegang tot de beta-functie, dus deze blogpost is niet als Twitter thread geschreven, zoals Chris wel heeft gedaan als demo. Maar ik hou het in de gaten en als het beschikbaar is, zal ik het zelf testen. Nu nog een thread bedenken die ik dan kan schrijven…
     

    Reply

    1. Frank, apologies in advance to you and your readers for the reply in English. The feature is definitely in Beta and there are no instructions I’m aware of yet, but if you’re adventurous and want to take a stab, you might try visiting https://threadreaderapp.com/account/micropub while logged into ThreadReader to see what happens. The developers may drop some documentation/links into the IndieWeb chat shortly for a more “official” beta, but do write about your experiences/problems so they can fix any problems or round off any UI quirks you may encounter.

      Reply

  10. Gisteren schreef ik over de beta van @threadreaderapp waarmee ik de Twitter threads op mijn eigen blog kan posten.
    diggingthedigital.com/threadreaderap…

    1/
    Deze functie is in beta mogelijk, zo blijkt uit een post van @ChrisAldrich op zijn eigen blog. Interessant, dus dat wil ik wel testen
    boffosocko.com/2020/05/28/thr…

    2/
    Nu heb ik via een comment van Chris de toegang gekregen tot deze beta zodat ik mijn eigen blog aan ThreadReaderApp kon toevoegen. (threadreaderapp.com/account/microp…)
    3/
    De grote vraag gaat nu dus zijn…. Kan ik deze thread op mijn eigen blog posten? We gaan het zien! Tijd om op “Alles tweeten” te klikken….
    /eot

    <!–

    –>

    Reply

  11. Hi Chris

    I can’t find any documentation to tell me HOW iA Writer can work with Micropub. I’ve been using both for ages now and linking them would be ideal.

    Reply

    1. I looked the other day myself, but its apparently only usable with the Mac and iOS versions. They haven’t built it into Windows or Android versions yet, so you definitely won’t see it there. I’ve seen some reports that they’re still making some tweaks and getting bugs worked out on the Mac side. Which platforms are you using?

      Reply

  15. In March I wrote about Participating in PressEdConf20 directly from WordPress.
    While using that method for publishing is still my preference for owning the content first and syndicating it to Twitter, there’s another method that many educators might find simpler. ThreadReaderApp now has beta support for the Micropub Spec so you can publish Twitter threads directly to your blog.
    This means that participants can write their threads directly on Twitter and reverse syndicate them to their websites if they support the Micropub spec.
    For PressEdConf participants who have WordPress.org based sites (or .com sites with a subscription that supports plugins), this should be relatively easy since there’s a Micropub plugin for WordPress.
    Download the plugin, activate it, write your Twitter thread, and have Thread Reader unroll it. Then authentic Thread Reader to your website at https://threadreaderapp.com/account/micropub and click the publish button on the thread you want to copy to your site.
    This functionality in Thread Reader will also work for any other blogging platform or CMS that has either native or plugin support for Micropub. This includes platforms like Drupal, Grav, WithKnown, and many others including several static site generators.
    Once things are set up, it’s pretty straightforward. You can read about my first experience (linked above) for more details.
    If you have prior unrolled Twitter threads in your Thread Reader account you can use them as test cases before the next PressEdConf.
     
     

    Reply

  22. Some small pieces, loosely joined for owning one’s highlights online.
    I ran across a Chrome extension for highlights, annotations, and tagging tonight. It’s called Learning Paths. It works roughly as advertised for creating and saving highlights and annotations online. With a social silo log in process (I didn’t see an email login option), you’ve quickly got an account on the service.
    You can then use the extension to highlight, tag, and annotate web pages. One can export their data as a .csv file which is nice. They’ve also got an online dashboard which displays all your data and has the ability to see public data from other users as well.
    Screencapture of the Learning Paths UI for their Chrome extension
    One of the interesting pieces they support is allowing users to tweet a thread from all their highlights of a piece online. Upon seeing this I thought it might make a useful feature for getting data into one’s personal wiki, website, or digital garden, particularly now that  ThreadReaderApp supports posting unrolled Twitter threads to one’s Micropub enabled website. 
    So the workflow goes something like this (with links to examples of my having tried it along the way):

    Use Learning Paths to highlight an article;
    Use the sharing interface to share the highlights as a Twitter thread;
    Make any modifications to the Twitter thread and then post;

    Example: https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1282863853802405888 

    Go to the thread and reply to one of the tweets with “@ThreadReaderApp unroll”;
    Log into your ThreadReaderApp account to see the thread;

    Example: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1282863853802405888.html

    Go to your “My Authored Threads” tab;
    Click on the “Publish n Tweets to Blog” button for the appropriate thread (and handle any authentication/authorization workflow);
    The thread of highlights should now be on your website;

    Example: https://boffosocko.com/2020/07/13/55773547/

    Screencapture example of ThreadReaderApp’s Authored Threads tab interface
    While this works relatively well, there are a few drawbacks:

    The UI for the annotations is a bit flaky at times and in my experience often disappears before you’ve had a chance to save them.
    The workflow misses out on any of the annotations and tags you might add to each of the highlights (unless you manually add them to the thread, and even then you may run out of space/characters).
    The appearance of the thread on your site is simply what you get.

    While the idea works roughly in practice, it isn’t as optimal as the workflow or data fidelity I’ve found in using more robust tooling like that found in Hypothes.is for which I’ve also built a better UI on my website.
    Still others, might appreciate the idea, so have at it! I’d love to see others’ ideas about owning their highlights, annotations, and related data in a place they control.
     

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  24. #IndieWeb to the rescue. There are a few great options for this. None of which should require you to write any code! 
    One of my favorite is Kevin Marks’ Noter Live (open source) which is great for live tweeting and creating long threads quickly, especially at conferences. When you’re done, it’s kept a record of everything which you can quickly cut/paste as HTML into your website for an instant archive post.
    Another option if your website supports the Micropub spec (perhaps with a plugin?) ThreadReaderApp recently added support to let you unroll the thread and you can go to your account and authenticate to your website and post the thread with one click.
    I’ll also note that WordPress’ Gutenberg just added the ability to unroll threads to websites built with it as well. 
    In addition to general public use, these could actually be the backbone of an interesting journalistic live notebook for reporters in the field who could quickly compile/archive their threads for expanded articles later on.

    Reply

  27. Fifteen: A Call to Action—Start your Own Digital Commonplace Book Today
    Start your own digital commonplace today! There are some platforms mentioned above, but none of them have the flexibility and adaptability that WordPress provides. I’d love to see how others are doing this and what it allows them to create.
    #HeyPresstoConf20

    Thanks for coming to my presentation!
    Feel free to ask questions about any of the notes here on my website or from any of the Tweets. Comments on the Tweets will ping my site (using Brid.gy as mentioned), and I’ll be able to reply directly from my commonplace book. You can also use Webmentions from your website and then our sites/commonplace books can carry on a conversation of ideas.
    If you’d like, feel free to explore my commonplace book (or at least the public portions—I post a lot of work privately). You can find today’s presentation and all the other things I collect under the label for the conference at #HeyPresstoConf20.
    Did you present today and want to own a copy of your presentation on your own website? Take a look at some notes I made about using ThreadReaderApp to roll up all your tweets and publish them to your site using Micropub, which I mentioned earlier in this presentation.

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  29. It’s awesome to see this feature added and that it expands the ability to do do this sort of workflow directly from one’s website instead of relying on posting to Twitter and relying on ThreadReaderApp to unroll a thread and post it to a WordPress site using the flexible Micropub specification. I’d love to see more POSSE (Post to your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) syndication set ups within WordPress.
    I’m hoping that future versions of this provide the Twitter permalinks for the syndicated copies there to be returned to my WordPress site for storage. In my case, I’m using the simple Syndication Links plugin which has storage and/or finds the storage location in WordPress to allow for the display of those permalinks in my post to indicate where I’ve syndicated the copies. This does two things: it’s a reminder of where my content lives elsewhere on the web (especially if I later want to go back and delete them, or to delete them if I’m deleting or making the original post private/unpublished) and it allows services like Brid.gy to find my original post and backfeed replies to the Twitter versions back into the comments section of my post using the Webmention spec (via the Webmention plugin and the Semantic Linkbacks plugin).

    Reply

  30. They released the feature earlier this year to work via Micropub. I wrote about their early UI here: ThreadReaderApp now has beta support for the Micropub Spec so you can publish Twitter threads directly to your blog. The nice part is that it works for a dozen or more platforms (not just WordPress) that already support Micropub.
    Another interesting option is @KevinMarks’s noterlive.com which will compile your threaded tweets for cutting/pasting HTML to your site. Perhaps one day he’ll add Micropub functionality as well?

    Reply

  33. Boris, I love this idea of this and how it could work.
    If you haven’t come across it, ThreadReaderApp does something similar to this but in a reverse syndication instead of the method you’re describing. It allows one to publish a thread on Twitter and then use ThreadReaderApp to roll the thread up and post a copy of it to one’s website that supports Micropub. I’ve written a bit about how it works here: https://boffosocko.com/2020/05/28/threadreaderapp-micropub-to-blog/
    I’d love to see something more like what you’re describing.
    Another interesting option for this that has a lot of the functionality you’re looking for is Kevin Marks’ http://www.noterlive.com/. I know he’s considered adding Micropub functionality to it. I suspect he’d be very open to anyone who’d like to add that or other refinements via pull request to https://github.com/kevinmarks/noterlive. It does post live threads to twitter and currently gives the output as raw HTML that one could cut/paste into their site.

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  34. Boris, I love this idea of this and how it could work.
    If you haven’t come across it, ThreadReaderApp does something similar to this but in a reverse syndication instead of the method you’re describing. It allows one to publish a thread on Twitter and then use ThreadReaderApp to roll the thread up and post a copy of it to one’s website that supports Micropub. I’ve written a bit about how it works here: boffosocko.com/2020/05/28/threadreaderapp-micropub-to-blog/
    I’d love to see something more like what you’re describing.
    Another interesting option for this that has a lot of the functionality you’re looking for is Kevin Marks’ Noter Live. I know he’s considered adding Micropub functionality to it. I suspect he’d be very open to anyone who’d like to add that or other refinements via pull request to GitHub – kevinmarks/noterlive: A tool for indieweb live noting (aka live tweeting/live blogging). It does post live threads to twitter and currently gives the output as raw HTML that one could cut/paste into their site.
    Read on February 17, 2021 at 09:54PM

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  35. JR writes about some of his journey into blogging. I appreciate some of the last part about the 9x9x25 blogs. For JR it seems like some smaller prompts got him into more regular writing.
    He mentions Stephen Downes‘ regular workflow as well. I think mine is fairly similar to Stephen’s. To some extent, I write much more on my own website now than I ever had before. This is because I post a lot more frequently to my own site, in part because it’s just so easy to do. I’ll bookmark things or post about what I’ve recently read or watched. My short commentary on some of these is just that—short commentary. But occasionally I discover, depending on the subject, that those short notes and bookmark posts will spring into something bigger or larger. Sometimes it’s a handful of small posts over a few days or weeks that ultimately inspires the longer thing. The key seems to be to write something.
    Perhaps a snowball analogy will work? I take a tiny snowball of words and give it a proverbial roll. Sometimes it sits there and other times it rolls down the hill and turns into a much larger snowball. Other times I get a group of them and build a full snowman.
    Of course lately a lot of my writing starts, like this did, as an annotation (using Hypothes.is) to something I was reading. It then posts to my website with some context and we’re off to the races.
    It’s just this sort of workflow that I was considering when I recently suggested that those using annotation as a classroom social annotation tool, might also consider using it to help students create commonplace books to help students spur their writing. The key is to create small/low initial stakes that have the potential to build up into something bigger. Something akin to the user interface of Twitter (and their tweetstorm functionality). Write a short sentence or two on which you can hit publish, but if the mood strikes, then write another, and another until you’ve eventually gotten to something that could be a blog post (or article). Of course if you do this, you should own it.
    This is also the sort of perspective which Sönke Ahrens takes in his excellent book How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers, though there he’s prescribing something for general note taking when I might suggest it’s a prescription for a pedagogy behind living and writing.

    Syndicated copies:

    Reply

  37. Que antes o después debería llevarme a poder escribir los planteamientos técnico-prácticos de cómo cualquier podría hacerlo entendiendo bien cada paso y tomando así un pasito más hacia la soberanía digital

    Reply

  39. Que antes o después debería llevarme a poder escribir los planteamientos técnico-prácticos de cómo cualquier podría hacerlo entendiendo bien cada paso y tomando así un pasito más hacia la soberanía digital

    Reply

    1. I only use it every couple of weeks and it was working the last time I tried it. I don’t use it very often as it makes backfeed from Twitter using Brid.gy a bit harder/less intuitive unless you know how all the plumbing works. Usually I POSSE content from my site to Twitter rather than use PESOS like this method.

      It looks like you might have to go to https://threadreaderapp.com/account/author to click the publish button to send it to your website now. They’ve made a few subtle changes since I wrote the original. Did it work for you?

      Reply

  43. Threaderapp unroll!
    Acabo de leer este post que tiene un par de añitos ya sobre cómo podrías hacer un hilo en Twitter y luego llevártelo a tu blog foreva con Threadreader boffosocko.com/2020/05/28/thr… por ello necesito primero hacer un hilo, y a eso voy
    Todo esto viene por la sempiterna investigación con #Indiweb para crear un veritable jardín digital
    Que antes o después debería llevarme a poder escribir los planteamientos técnico-prácticos de cómo cualquier podría hacerlo entendiendo bien cada paso y tomando así un pasito más hacia la soberanía digital
    Así que llegados a este punto voy a publicar, desenrrollar y ver si lo puedo llevar a comunicacionabierta.net bien empaquetadito

    Reply

Mentions

Likes

Reposts

Bookmarks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To respond to a post on this site using your own website, create your post making sure to include the (target) URL/permalink for my post in your response. Then enter the URL/permalink of your response in the (source) box and click the 'Ping me' button. Your response will appear (possibly after moderation) on my page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Learn More)