Bluesky down? Never seen that happen before (doesn’t seem to work on mobile either) 😅
Microposts
I sometimes find myself cancelling my Micro.blog subscription on a whim when I start thinking about blogging on a new platform (sorry @manton! 😅). But after each time, I find myself coming back. Why? There just ain’t a publishing platform out there that makes the barrier of publishing this easy. Plus, of course as there’s a backlog of previous posts already, you avoid the horror of staring at your fancy new blog with just one blog post published.
Having said that, there is a completely new blog design coming soon (on micro.blog). Just takes a while for me to get all the pixels in the right order, before I’m happy with it. 😁
Part of me thinks, now would be a good time to drop off the social media for an extended period of time (4 years, perhaps?). Then again, that might not be wise either. After all, when you know what’s happening around the world, you can at least try to prepare for the ill effects. Thoughts? 🤪
I wonder if, 10 years from now, we’ll still be playing the “my platform just got rug pulled—where do I go now?” game. Or have we finally realized that the only way to opt out for good is to make our personal websites and blogs the place to be again? #startyourblog
Micro.blog might just be the last benevolent social network out there, when all the dust has settled. I mean, there’s Bluesky and Mastodon for sure, but.. dunno. Feeling pessimistic about the future of social media in general atm. There’s shitshows and dumbster fires everywhere you look 😓
I wonder how medium.com’s article discovery works these days, because it feels like.. it doesn’t? Wrote a piece and published it on Friday. Today, it has 3 views and 0 reads. And I’m supposed to have 1.5k “followers” there. Is that the normal experience there these days? Seems bit.. brutal? 😅
Oh, this is 💯 my problem, too: Cutting back by @MacPsych
Spreading myself thin with all the different social channels in the recent years and this year (despite all the Fediverse stuff) has probably been one of the worst. Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Micro.blog + handful of blogs on various platforms. It’s just too much. I’m strongly contemplating writing to a single blog in 2025, perhaps sharing those posts to Fediverse and be done with it. Tbh, not even sure about the sharing part. I mean, distribution is nice, but.. I really don’t want to keep bouncing between all those socials next year. I can’t seem keep myself active in one, let alone all of them. 😅
Oh how I hate those AI movie trailers that have infested YouTube with passion. Just saw another one, which I first though was a “real trailer” for an upcoming blockbuster. It’s beyond me how those don’t get taken down / sued by the movie studios. It’s one thing to make “fan art” and whole another to not even mention in the trailer description that this one’s generative AI made. All “just for the clicks/views”. 🤬
What a stunning Aurora Borealis week it was last week. One can never get tired of these views! 😍
#auroraborealis #finland
If someone’s interested, I have a few record.club invites to share. First come, first serve 😁👋
Looks like only Mastodon cross-post went through. Bluesky and Threads “didn’t get the memo”. Let’s try again 🤔
Testing micro.blog cross-posting to Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads (don’t mind this message, will delete later). 😁
I’m a bit late to the party (here on this blog), but I just want to take a moment to congratulate @dave for the incredible milestone of blogging non-stop for the past 30 years! There are very few (if any!) bloggers who have been doing this for as long as that. Even the Wayback Machine doesn’t have records of those first years (as it was started in 1996 and Dave’s blog has been around from ‘94!) @kottke.org and @zeldman.com might come close!
So, congratulations are certainly in order! Hat tip to you, sir! 🥳
Switched my new finnish blog from Eleventy (& Netlify) to micro.blog just now. Surprisingly painless switch! Synergy ftw! 😁
Saturday, September 28, 2024 →
Aaand the finnish version is live now too! - juhaliikala.fi/kahden-bl… 😁
Got my custom micro.blog theme in good speed this weekend, aye! See it in action at https://blog.juhaliikala.com/ . Still ton of things to tweak, improve and implement, but eventually, the idea is to publish this as a micro.blog theme/plugin that others can use in their micro.blog blogs too 😊 Early feedback much appreciated! 🙏
So, as we now have three main ways for subscribing to a blog/publication; email newsletter, RSS and ActivityPub (handle), which will win? Some blogs even add a fourth way: Subscribing via WhatsApp / Telegram / Etc. Will RSS and ActivityPub subscribing continue being marginal use case and email still rules? I have no idea, but I think about this a lot.
I feel ActivityPub (especially in it’s current form) has a bit similar problem that RSS does, non-techical users just don’t use them for subscribing. It’s been all about newsletters for so long, that not sure if that mental model will change easily.
As a blogger, do you intend to support several different ways of subscribing (to your blog)? Or, do you plan to just promote one primary way of subscribing and maybe offer the other ways of subscribing in “the fine details”?
Excited to see what @john.onolan.org and team Ghost is cooking up here: activitypub.ghost.org. I find the new subscriber flow especially interesting (signup with email or ActivityPub handle). Some ideas here for future micro.blog additions too @manton? 😊
Aaand back to the “real human” type of profile picture again, after rockin the cartoon avatar for a while. In this age of AI generated pictures, having a “real human face” as the profile image feels nicer I guess 😄
New profile image, yo! 😄
Thanks @maique for pointing me in the right direction for finding Andy’s work! 🙏
I miss those early days when most people I know from blogging, web projects, online biz and related endeavours were on Twitter. Both in Finland and globally. It was so easy to connect and stay connected with everyone.
Fast forward to today, and we are all scattered across various social networks online. Mastodon, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Tumblr, Bluesky, micro.blog.. and yes, X.
Ugh. Too many places to keep track of, let alone stay active on. ActivityPub certainly is a step in the right direction in this context, but will it ever get adopted widely enough to “solve” this problem?
I guess only time will tell. 🤷🏻
Soooo.. Threads just launched their web version, cool. Unless you’re in EU region, which I am. Can’t use the app, can’t use the web. Twitter is a mess, left ages ago. STILL no Bluesky invite either (although I joined waiting list last year). Truly feeling like a second class citizen here! 🥲
Well, at least micro.blog works (and Mastodon!) 🤪
So, Elon want’s to transform Twitter into “everything app” X (handle all our shopping, banking, messaging, etc.), plant a microchip to our brains, build an AI that understands the universe and then.. when it all goes south, escape to space in a 🚀? 😅🤪
Made some minor(ish) design tweaks to the blog today. New background from Santorini trip, of course! 😄 Also, dropped the newsletter subscribe option for now. I personally feel it doesn’t make much sense to send these (mostly) microblog type of posts via email (even if gathered in weekly emails). RSS feels like a better channel for those imho.
I wonder how others feel about this? Do you subscibe to email updates if the posts are mostly microblog type of posts?
Well it was fun while it lasted. As you may have heard, Meta has blocked EU users from accessing Threads. I noticed I wasn’t able to publish, comment or do pretty much anything else than browse the main feed in the app someday last week. No idea when the app will be usable for us EU mortals again.. :(
Thank you for the shiny stickers @manton! They arrived to mailbox while we were on our summer holiday trip. Just opened the envelope yesterday. 😊
Threads by Instagram is not available in Europe (at least for now)? At least I don’t see it in Finnish appstore. For someone who can try it, is it ActivityPub compatible? Can I use it with micro.blog somehow (follow people, respond to threads, etc.? 🤔
Curious if the Apple’s upcoming Journal app will turn our to be something that would make me keep a personal journal. Micro.blog is great for public journaling, but I’ve never really used an app for private journaling. Tbh, it’s been ages since I’ve had any kind of private journal. 😄
Threads, by Instagram - Could that be the name of the Meta’s answer to Twitter? It might. I’m actually more than mildly excited about this. Especially if it really does have ActivityPub support built in. Instagram userbase suddenly available in Fediverse would be like a.. big bang..or something? 🫨
Third time’s the charm? 😄 To get better aligned with the whole Fediverse concept, I aliased my Mastodon account (@juhaliikala@me.dm) once more and will be using @juha@juhaliikala.com as my “main Fediverse home” from now until eternity (I hope!). So if you’re wondering why you’re suddenly following this handle, that’s why 😊
Also imported my following list to this instance, so all should be in sync now (or shortly, as the data still propagates).