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Micro.blog

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121–130 of 153 posts

Re: Micro.blog

#121

Post by mcguire »

drb91 wrote: post #33
deyan wrote: post #22

Lots of negativity here, as is unfortunately typical at HN far too often these days. Especially given that this project is what HN is supposed to be about - done by a lone hacker with help from volunteers, trying to create a different and hopefully better social media. Sure, it may or may not work, it has all sorts of pros and cons, but I’d vote for being open-minded and constructive rather than cynical from the get…

I would want to know if my product did not address any demands, especially since they’re charging money. This is not a run-it-yourself Show HN link to a github repo, and honest critique is the whole reason to post here. Personally, I’m struggling to see the value over any of the many static blog generators out there, considering the recurring(!) cost.

"Micro.blog encourages publishing at your own domain name, where you can control your own content, but it still integrates posts into a familiar timeline user interface, with centralized replies, favorites, and an open API based on JSON Feed and IndieWeb standards."

Static blog generators are different beasts.

If this were Disqus without ads and slowness, I'd give them some money.

Re: Micro.blog

#122

Post by mcguire »

vntok wrote: post #91
arnvald wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop criticising people for charging money for their work. You don't do that to a doctor you visit, you don't do that to a taxi driver, why do you do that to a fellow programmer?

You would criticize a doctor who would order expensive unwarranted scans, or a taxi driver who would take longer routes than needed. In other words you would criticize people who charge you for services that don't address your needs.

Likewise, don't criticise a taxi driver because you can drive yourself.

Re: Micro.blog

#123

Post by LaGrange »

zhte415 wrote: post #108
LaGrange wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short format also encouraged better structuring of arguments and discouraged long, hard to process paragraphs. Together with threading it's often using to fairly significant success. I don't think a person who can't be bothered to structure their writing for twitter would do much better on a blog. There is a significant difference in legibility, but it's not a clear win; I know both people who process well-writte…

Great! Doctoral papers now in 300 characters. That may be possible in APL.

It's like you're intentionally misreading what I wrote. Even in traditional media a paragraph is generally shorter than a page, and yet doctoral theses often span more than said page.

Re: Micro.blog

#124

Post by djsumdog »

arendtio wrote: post #47

> There's a better way: a network of independent microblogs. Short posts like tweets but on your own web site that you control. Either I don't get it, or their service is not what they advertise. After reading that line, I would expect a somewhat federated blogging platform where you can set up your own server, and it joins the 'network of independent microblogs'. But I can't find any instructions on how to do that?!…

Yea, I mean if this were a paid service with full ActivityPub and OStatus support (and could interact with Mastodon, Plemore, GNU Social, et. al.) then that would be something different.

But a $5 a month, non-open source, closed, siloed system?

I'd recommend going back to the drawing board and use more off-the-shelf stuff. Create a payment gateway to setup and maintain a Mastodon or Plemore instance, with a backend that automatically sets up the domain and handles software updates.

Yes, there are other services which do this, but there is plenty of room to do it better. Creating a new micro-twitter is pretty much a non-starter at this point.

Re: Micro.blog

#125

Post by vishnu_ks »

ehsankia wrote: post #32
jeena wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I know they do is that they have a full time community manager and after more than a year participating I can say that the community is very civilized, see also https://monday.micro.blog/

Every social network out there has community managers. The point is, after a certain point, scale outpaces manual moderation. It's easy to keep a small community moderated, scaling that up is the challenge every single website faces.

Yeah. But this is not yet another social network isn't? Very few people would be willing to pay $5 a month compared to the number of people using Facebook or Twitter. Moderating this website is definitely a doable task.

Re: Micro.blog

#126

Post by carlosdp »

MattBearman wrote: post #71
hylianwarrior wrote: post #10

FYI: After you set up a profile it lets you customize your footer with arbitrary HTML/CSS/JS. It's definitely not secure. See: http://xss.micro.blog

Is that really a problem? XSS attacks usually involve letting site's visitors add arbitrary html/js. The account owner being able to is more of a feature.

XSS attacks aren't the only thing to be worried about. As noted above, you could buy subdomain like "support.micro.blog" and trivially phish people's micro.blog credentials, for example.

Re: Micro.blog

#127

Post by chrisaldrich »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #117
eksemplar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really, is it? I think the concept is great, but what’s really needed is ownership and self hosted blogs made easier than they are now. + a popular index. I mean, a centralized blogging service that lets you customise your style sheet a little is basically just MySpace.

Completely agree. The 'indie web' folks have this right.

Perhaps I'm missing some context in the thread, but it seems like many are missing the fact that Micro.blog is actually trying to solve just this--you own your own domain and the data! It is one of the first paid IndieWeb platforms out there that is trying to make it simple for the non-technical user to jump in with both feet. While it may not have _everything_ yet, for a relatively inexpensive hosting fee you've got your own website for long posts, short notes, photos, etc. that is part of an integrated community. If you want to pull up stakes, you can export your data and move your domain and site somewhere else.

It also seems like a major bonus that it also supports new specs like webmention, micropub, microsub, etc.

Re: Micro.blog

#128

Post by MaxBarraclough »

chrisaldrich wrote: post #127
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. The 'indie web' folks have this right.

Perhaps I'm missing some context in the thread, but it seems like many are missing the fact that Micro.blog is actually trying to solve just this--you own your own domain and the data! It is one of the first paid IndieWeb platforms out there that is trying to make it simple for the non-technical user to jump in with both feet. While it may not have _everything_ yet, for a relatively inexpensive hosting fee you've got…

But you can't run your own server, right?

Owning the data is a very good start, but I don't see that it qualifies as proper indie web, if you're kinda-sorta tied to their service.

All of this is quite aside from the points others have made, that it offers no real solution to Hate and harassment are too common.

Re: Micro.blog

#129

Post by sharkjacobs »

IshKebab wrote: post #94
SyneRyder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's free if you just want to reserve a username and add an RSS feed from your own website - which can be either full articles (which will appear in Micro.Blog as a title & link), or short 280 char posts. You can reply to posts with a free account too. ------- EDIT: Probably easier if for the other plans I just post the site's own info: New Microblog — $5/month We'll create and host a microblog for you at username.mi…

That seems very expensive for what is a very simple site with very low costs. Why not $5/year?

The developer is trying to make it a financially viable project with what is, presumably, a pretty small customer base.

Re: Micro.blog

#130

Post by chrisaldrich »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #65

I actually find it a problem (for myself at least but there probably are many people who feel the same) that we only seem to have Medium-like big-article blogging and Twitter-like SMS-y single-sentence microblogging platforms. I really want a hybrid, something in between, something for short posts but without twitterish post length limits, with markdown and media embedding support, letting you to edit your posts when…

Micro.blog is exactly just this sort of hybrid solution. If you start typing a short status update you can publish it as such. Once you go past the 280ish character limit, micro.blog gives you a new field to give the post a title (if you want).

I use my personal website running WordPress a lot like this hybrid model as well. I can do all the things you mentioned and have separate feeds for all of the related post types (articles, status updates, photos, embedded media, etc.) Micro.blog also allow me to pipe my RSS feed into it so that I can interact with people there and any comments people make within micro.blog come back to my original post where I can see and reply to them.

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