Musings of a Modern Day Cyberneticist
Manton Reece (manton.org)I rolled out a few Webmention improvements to Micro.blog today: Fixed the permalink for a reply when you aren’t signed in, which was preventing external sites from verifying the link after receiving a Webmention from Micro.blog. Added limited support for accepting replies from external sites that ...
The idea of microblogging on my own website is something I’ve been kicking around for years. Instead of posting short pieces of text to Twitter, longer pieces of text to this blog, and photos to Instagram, why not just post all of that stuff here? I could still cross-post to other sites if I wanted to, but my intention has always been that this website should represent me on the web and so it only makes sense to put all of my work here.
My microblog is a new part of this site where I’m posting the kinds of things that I posted on Twitter and Instagram. I’ll still post things on those sites for the foreseeable future, but only a subset of the things I’m posting here. You can follow my microblog using a feed reader (well, more on that later) using the links on my new feeds page.
For Micro Monday, I’m following and recommending @rickwysocki, another in the growing list of educators on micro.blog as well as practicing IndieWeb principles.
Belle B. Cooper (blog.bellebcooper.com)I've noticed a few posts on Micro.blog today that are clearly related to my post about leaving yesterday (though not sent to me directly). The general gist of these posts is that criticism should be done privately.
Belle B. Cooper (blog.bellebcooper.com)I've come and gone from Micro.blog several times before. I joined long before the Kickstarter, when barely anyone was there. I tried it again after the Kickstarter, when the community looked more like it does today. And I came back again a few weeks ago for the most fun, if not the longest, period of time I've spent there.
Manton Reece (manton.org)There have been many articles written in the last month about the role of social networks. Some even reach the obvious conclusion: that the top social networks are too big. This interview on Slate was fairly representative, covering monopolies and centralized power. But these articles always stop sh...
Dan Cohen (social.dancohen.org)After listening to @manton on @monday with @macgenie, I think Micro.blog could use a clearer one-sentence pitch about what it is for potential new users. This is my first attempt, but it would be interesting to hear from others: “Micro.blog is an easy way to host and share your posts, photos, and even a podcast in a way that maximizes what’s great about social networks and minimizes what’s troubling about them.”
Sameer Vasta (inthemargins.ca)[...] We like to tell ourselves that micro.blog is a great place because we are civil and we have good conversations and discussions, even when we disagree, but I have faced more dismissiveness and insult on micro.blog in the past year than I have at any time in that other “micro” social network. This is not the civil community that we make it out to be, and by pretending that it is, we ignore when people feel actively excluded. [...]
Eddie Hinkle (eddiehinkle.com)If you use Micro.blog completely from the native apps, everything works smoothly. If you communicate via the IndieWeb through webmentions, everything (mostly) works smoothly. But there is a big hiccup that is still being worked out when you communicate via Webmentions to Micro.blog. The current functionality is described here, however it's not exhaustive and it doesn't work 100% of the time. Some of the issues are documented on this GitHub issue, and eventually we'll work out the best practice use case. So what if you don't care about best practices and just want to communicate with Micro.blog through Webmentions? I have a working solution on my own website. Typically in a Webmention you have a source (your post) and a target (the post you are replying to) and the Webmention endpoint used is retrieved from the target. However because with Micro.blog sometimes the target post is on Wordpress or an externally hosted blog instead of Micro.blog. This causes an issue, because if you are wanting the Webmention to be received by Micro.blog but the target post does not advertise the Micro.blog Webmention endpoint, your post will never make it in to the Micro.blog system for an externally hosted post that you are replying to. What I do is I essentially do a "cc/carbon copy" Webmention. First I do the standard Webmention sending procedure, and then I check if the target Webmention endpoint was Micro.blog's endpoint (https://micro.blog/webmention), if it is not then I know Micro.blog did not receive the post and I send an additional Webmention. The CC Webmention contains the source as my post, the target as the post I'm replying to, and it gets sent to the Micro.blog Webmention endpoint. Micro.blog does a couple of things upon receiving the Webmention. First, it checks to see if the source post is coming from a URL that belongs to a verified Micro.blog user. Second, it checks if the target post exists already in the Micro.blog system. If both of those checks go through, then it will add the new post and link it up to the correct Micro.blog user as a reply to the correct Micro.blog post. This is not necessarily an easy thing to add in most Webmention systems and is not the intended final destination of cross-site replies. But if you want it to work today, this useful hack will get it working for you.
A useful layout of the technicalities, particularly for those running their own sites and syndicating into the micro.blog network.
Syndicated copies to:It is completely baffling to me that a lot of people seem to be choosing Mastodon over Micro.blog as an alternative to Twitter lately. At least among tech geeks on Twitter anyway. I admittedly do not know a lot about Mastodon but it seems confusing AF to set up by all accounts and may be just yet an...
Micro.blog can be so many things to so many different people. We need to help them clarify to others exactly what it is that the service is doing and how to help people begin to use it. It’s not simply just a Twitter replacement as some might pitch it.
We should consider: How would Marshall McLuhan pitch it?
Syndicated copies to:One question I wonder: while I think the self-made entrepreneur has got to be synonymous with imperialist America—couldn’t the independent autodidact, operating apart from corporate interests, be a modern type of vanguard for the dispossessed? I feel like the Instagram influencer is more a direct descendant of The American Dream; the bespoke blog a piece of the underground press—particularly in 2018, when they have become ancient machinery.
At Micro.blog, we believe there needs to be a line between the social network and the content at your own site. Your web site is your own, where you have the freedom to write about whatever you want, but a service like Micro.blog has a responsibility to build a safe community for its users.
Jean MacDonald (micro.welltempered.net)TL;DR You don’t have to choose between the platforms, but here are some of the ways that they are different. You don’t have to leave Twitter, but there is a good chance Twitter will leave you …without your favorite Twitter client, that is. You may also be exasperated by Twitter’s refusal to ...
Becky Hansmeyer (Becky Hansmeyer)Yesterday I realized that I would really love a standalone app for publishing to Micro.blog that was focused on WordPress. The app itself would be structured very simply: it would open to a list of…
This sounds like something I think a lot of people would want. I know I do. It’d be particularly great if one could also simultaneously update/edit micro.blog posts as well, particularly when one is syndicating them to micro.blog via a feed. (Or does micro.blog accept fat pings to update the content? and maybe add some UI to indicate it was edited at a later date to prevent people from doing a bait and switch post?)
The closest thing I can think of currently for this is Aaron Parecki’s open sourced Quill app which works via micropub (to both WordPress and/or micro.blog hosted, or to WordPress and then syndicated via feed to micro.blog). I suspect that, depending on how one authenticates, Quill could (?) be aware of syndicated copies to micro.blog and be able to edit the posts on both platforms after-the-fact. Since Quill is a (progressive?) web app, it could be used as a mobile app on both iOS and Android.
As an aside, I notice your WordPress blog shows a generic: “This Article was mentioned on micro.blog.” line in many of your comments. Are you doing this by design, or are you unaware of the Symantic Linkbacks plugin which will help to take webmentions to your site and help turn them into more friendly looking replies within your comments section?