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Cool Kickstarter: Indie Microblogging

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Melody Bot, Jan 10, 2017.

  1. Melody Bot Jan 10, 2017
    Melody Bot

    Your friendly little forum bot. Staff Member

    This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

    Manton Reece has started a new Kickstarter for a book and service dedicated to a new platform for microblogs:


    Do you remember how the web used to work? How the web was supposed to work?

    In the earlier days of the web, we always published to our own web site. If you weren’t happy with your web host, or they went out of business, you could move your files and your domain name, and nothing would break.

    Today, most writing instead goes into a small number of centralized social networking sites, where you can’t move your content, advertisements and fake news are everywhere, and if one of these sites fails, your content disappears from the internet. Too many sites have gone away and taken our posts and photos with them.
    ​

    Amen. This is something I’ve thought about a lot, and it’s one of the reasons I continue to run Chorus (and our forums) on domains I own powered mostly by software I can easy move to other servers if I need to.

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  2. crunchprank Jan 10, 2017
    crunchprank

    crunchprank.net Prestigious

    This seemed pretty cool at first, but I see two contradicting statements. Maybe I'm getting things confused?

    First:
    Today, most writing instead goes into a small number of centralized social networking sites, where you can’t move your content, advertisements and fake news are everywhere, and if one of these sites fails, your content disappears from the internet. Too many sites have gone away and taken our posts and photos with them.

    Second:
    When it officially launches, Micro.blog will be free for basic accounts and paid for extra features. If you want Micro.blog to host your microblog, for example, that's included in a $5/month plan. All the Kickstarter rewards at $20 or higher include 2, 6, or 12 months of paid service. And all reward tiers include the e-book and early access to Micro.blog.

    It seems as though at first he's targeting blogging platforms such as Medium, Tumblr, etc. But then he goes on to explain that his "Micro.blog" platform will be similar in which it will host your blog. That seems contradictory. Unless he's doing something similar to Ghost where you can either pay them to host your Ghost blog, or download the free open-source software and host it on your own. But I can't tell for sure.
     
  3. mercury Jan 10, 2017
    mercury

    modern-day offspring fanatic Supporter

    From what I gathered, the idea is that this will take any blog on any platform (provided it has an RSS feed), compile them all into one feed for readers to peruse, and handle stuff like liking/commenting/etc. I took the second bit you quoted to mean that if you don't already have a blog hosted somewhere, you can choose to pay to host it through the Micro.blog service (rather than elsewhere/on your own).

    If that's indeed what it is, I hope it takes off. Content ownership is a scary thing that usually goes undiscussed, unless Facebook changes its TOS about photos or whatever. This doesn't inherently solve that issue, but it at least opens up a way to self-host content without sacrificing good social features.
     
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  4. crunchprank Jan 10, 2017
    crunchprank

    crunchprank.net Prestigious

    Okay, I see what you're saying (and what he is possibly saying, though clarification wouldn't hurt) and if that is the case, then this does indeed sound like something I'd be onboard for. Content ownership is definitely a scary thing. I only recently made the migration from my own blog (powered by Ghost) to Medium. And while Medium provides the ability to help with exposure via tags, suggested readings, etc, I still don't feel like the content is "mine" as much as I did when I was running it on my own blog. But when I'm running it on my own site, exposure is much harder to achieve. So it's a rock and a hard place for me. But thank you for the clarity on the matter!
     
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