Welcome to the Decentered Podcast.
I'm Sean Tilley and I'm here with Manton Reece He is the creator of micro.blog, and
he is joining us today to talk about his journey, and his experience with
developing for the social web, as well as his background with IndieWeb and some of
what he's doing with his company.
Thank you for joining me, Manton.
It's great to be here.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
So a good way that we start out on our podcast for every single episode is that
we talk a little bit about the backgrounds of the people that are joining us.
Would you be comfortable with sharing with our audience just who you are, where you
come from, and what's your story?
I guess the question is, how did you get to this point?
Yeah, great question.
It's been a bit of a journey, but a longtime Mac developer is how I usually
think about myself, kind of in the Apple developer ecosystem world with making Mac
apps in like 90's and early 2000's and then iPhone apps.
And then at some point I became kind of frustrated with the social media and like
the way Twitter was treating, treating developers and this like before Elon Musk,
like.
10 years ago and so I got more into my own blog and thinking about products that
could help people blog and that is really where micro.blog came from and that's -
I'm the founder of micro.blog and that's where I focus all my IndieWeb and
Fediverse-related time trying to make that better
That's awesome.
So, um, I saw that, you know, you had a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2017.
You raised a little over like 84, $85,000 to start this project.
What was that experience like having that campaign close, knowing that it was
successful, and then like trying to figure out, "okay, how do I build this thing?"
Yeah, it was an amazing experience.
It was definitely strange in that I didn't know how it was.
I'd never done a Kickstarter campaign before.
I had no idea what the reaction would be.
And I set my, like my goal, like way lower.
I think it was like $10,000.
I'm like, will I, will I meet that?
Like, will five people back this?
Like, who knows?
And in hindsight, I did a couple things right.
Because I was blogging about these ideas about the open web and I had a mailing
list that were, you know,
not like a newsletter, but like people could sign up if they were interested in
like an announcement about this.
And so I was able to like on day one, send an email to them saying, hey, you should
back this and et cetera.
And so I was blown away by the response, a little over 3000 people backed it.
And I was really excited and it just made a lot of things easier because this is
something I wanted to build anyway, but having like that kind of audience that was
ready
try out the beta ready with feedback.
Even, I mean, a lot of people backed it and they didn't quite know what it was.
Maybe they still don't know in some cases.
But just having that kind of community was really helpful.
I learned a lot.
I made a whole bunch of mistakes with the Kickstarter also, but I learned a lot and
I am still, yeah, that was the beginning of 2017.
We're in 2024.
So it's been a long time and it has been
Admittedly, it's taken pretty much until this point to deliver all the promises to
backers because micro.blog went smoothly, I think, and it's improved all the time
since then.
But I also, as part of the Kickstarter, wrote a book about blogging, and that has
taken a long time to get out and to iterate on.
And also, the world changes.
So like last year, everything happened with Twitter.
and with Mastodon and with threads and so, and Bluesky and there's just so much
activity in the social web and the Fediverse that I had to go back to the
book and like edit it and like add some more sections.
So it's kind of never ending, but I think I'm at the end of it.
No, it's really hard to kind of keep a pulse on all the different things that are
happening.
We try our best here, but like, it feels like everything is speeding up.
And if you're trying to like be comprehensive in how you write about
everything, there's just more stuff by the time you're done running, writing about
the last thing you wrote down.
So it's definitely a challenge.
So I saw that on your website, you mentioned that you co-authored the JSON
Feed technology.
And I imagine that was probably pretty instrumental in.
part of how micro.blog works.
Could you talk about maybe some of your background with the engineering side of
things?
Sure.
And JSON Feed is really fascinating.
And it wasn't just Brent Simmons led the effort on that.
I'm also like my name's on it, but a bunch of other people helped out with it.
And the idea with that was we all love RSS as a way to connect blogs together and as
a way to connect even social networks together in some cases.
Although most, unfortunately, most social networks have sort of dropped support for.
Twitter used to have RSS support.
They dropped it.
Bluesky just added RSS support like a month ago.
So I thought that was really interesting because the way I look at it is the, the
more like open formats or like if I build a product, I want it to support like as
many open APIs and formats as possible.
And so there's definitely some pushback of like why had reinvent the wheel.
And, um, I totally get that, but it's been so long since RSS was kind of frozen.
And there's so many developers that just don't work with XML anymore.
Um, that we felt like, you know, if we want the open web to actually continue to
improve, we need to like meet developers where they are.
And so having a JSON version of, of kind of what RSS is for was, was the idea.
And so, yeah, micro.blog uses it all throughout the platform.
So like pretty much any part of the API, uh, is returned with
JSON Feed, like if it's a list of things that come back from the API, that's gonna
be JSON Feed.
And then of course we host blogs for people and of course those all have RSS
and JSON Feed.
And it's just super useful.
Honestly, I mean, it's not that hard to parse RSS feeds but you gotta figure out
if you're gonna do it yourself, have a library that does it for you.
There's a lot of weird, you know, gotchas between Atom and RSS and...
badly formatted feeds.
So having something that sits alongside that is just really convenient.
And JSON is relatively straightforward as far as just hacking something together is
concerned.
Even someone with my lowly skills, I've been able to hack around with like the
Mastodon API and do like custom front end development just by like reading JSON
responses and having that I think is a godsend compared to the monstrosity that
is XML.
So.
totally.
And the other thing, like I read about this in my book a little bit, but the idea
and something I think the IndieWeb believes in too of like using existing web
standards for like micro blogging and social networking.
And so like, if you have any formatting in your post, you know, you might want to
have an inline link or like bold text and like HTML is actually pretty good at that,
it's kind of a solved problem.
And when you start to put HTML inside RSS, it just becomes very unreadable.
It's kind of an encoding nightmare.
And so yeah, JSON is just really useful for that kind of stuff.
100%.
So, you know, mentioning open web standards for a moment.
One of the things that I think is very interesting about micro.blog is that
technically it's within the Fediverse It uses ActivityPub to talk to the Fediverse
and it has basically been that way for a long time now.
But like, at what point did you decide that, hey, we're gonna adopt this and
we're gonna talk to Mastodon and be part of this bigger thing?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Like even like Mastodon and micro.blog kind of developed in parallel.
Like I think he shipped a little bit before I did, maybe about six months or
something like that.
And then of course, Mastodon has gotten way more attention as sort of like a good
default place for people that are bailing on their previous social network.
And at some point, a few years ago now, three or four years ago,
I kind of had to take a step back and like, do I want to compete with every
other project that's out there or do I want to just work with them and embrace
what they're doing?
And so I decided to support ActivityPub and we've been supporting ever since.
And like the first version a few years ago wasn't great.
I mean, it worked with Mastodon, but when Mastodon really started taking off a year
ago, two years ago, I was able to go and improve a whole bunch more.
and got a lot of good feedback from people.
So now it's pretty seamless.
Like I have my blog hosted on micro.blog.
It supports ActivityPub.
People on Mastodon can follow me.
I can follow them.
Reply is go back and forth.
A lot of people just think I'm using Mastodon.
They don't even really, which is great.
Like people, you shouldn't have to, yeah.
You shouldn't have to really think about it.
And so obviously there's more to do, but that in a way I was always willing to
support as many, you know, open APIs.
And so even before ActivityPub I supported some of the IndieWeb protocols like micro
pub for posting and web mention for sending replies back and forth.
But I think the ActivityPub in a way was like kind of a turning point where I
realized I'm not going to compete with everything.
I'm going to be compatible with everything.
So we post a Bluesky, we post to no stir.
We put, you know, it's like, I, and that kind of unlocked something in my brain
about like.
Now, when a new social network comes along or a new API, I don't have to think about
it too hard.
I just think about like, if I was a user of my platform, would I want it to be
compatible with that?
And if the answer is yes, then I try to support it.
Oh, that's really good.
Um, is it challenging to add new platforms or have you like kind of figured out
architecturally speaking, like, "Hey, I've abstracted everything away.
Adding a new service is relatively easy." Like.
It's still, no, it's hard still.
I mean, it's, sorry, my dog's barking.
I don't know if you can hear that.
The, it depends.
We have like ActivityPub and some of the web and some of the IndieWeb protocols are
the only things that are like really tightly integrated into micro.blog.
So like if you're on the micro.blog timeline and someone replies from Mastodon
to you, like it shows up in your mentions, like it's all pretty seamless.
And then some of the other services we support are more like one way.
Like the, IndieWeb thinks about like POSSE like post to your own site syndicate
elsewhere.
And so that, so like the Bluesky support and like the Nostr support and LinkedIn
and things like that are sort of like that.
Yeah.
You post your blog and then it sends it out.
Um, so like I've thought about adopting Bluesky's AT protocol and we, we support
like a tiny bit of it just in terms of the cross posting, but like
to fully integrate, it is a lot of work.
Things are not abstracted at that level.
It's funny that you mentioned that because we had Ryan Barrett on the other week.
He's from Bridgy Fed, and he was just talking about some of the challenges of
trying to do ,uh, ATproto's Federation API And like just the sheer amount of work you
have to do compared to just writing a JSON client is insane.
Like there are so many requirements, but you know, it's cool to hear that at least
you've given it some thought.
Yeah, and I'd love to do more.
And yeah, and the, Bridgy is a fascinating project and there's some basic support on
micro.blog for it.
So that definitely like if you, well, it doesn't work with Twitter anymore because
they kind of shut down their API, but things like Bluesky has, you know, Bridgy
has support for it.
And so if you have your blog configured on micro.blog correctly, Bridgy can find
replies on Bluesky.
and send them over to micro.blog, and you can see them in the timeline.
You can't reply to those yet.
So like it's not a hundred percent where it should be, but having those kinds of
projects like Bridgy, I think there should be more bridges like that and more sort of
gateways that connect services.
Cause I think it can be really interesting.
Not to mention, I think, you know, the people that hack on these things, it helps
build a lot of expertise between A, is it even possible to make services talk to
each other that way?
And B, like, how hard is it?
Like, what do I need to know as an engineer or a developer to make that even
happen?
And that's like a pretty obscure thing at this point.
Yeah, and some of this stuff is just kind of difficult.
Like, I mean, even ActivityPub is, I mean, it's pretty complicated.
Like, it's not just like you can read this one spec, it's like three or four
different specs that you have to figure out how they fit together and how Mastodon
supports them because if you're not compatible with Mastodon, you know, forget
it.
So there's still, it feels very early still in this, where we are.
Yeah, I think like probably within the next year or two, especially with Threads
coming in, a lot of things might get more standardized.
But until then, it's still, it's always been kind of a hodgepodge, even with
OStatus back in the day.
Like there are parts of the spec that are just completely undocumented, like using
Webfinger to figure out what, what resource lives at an address.
You would think like at this point we just bring it into the fold, but no, it's just
an unspoken extra thing.
Right.
And because Mastodon uses it, everybody else uses it too, because why wouldn't
you?
So.
No, I think the way that's developed is really interesting.
And, and I have, I'm not, I feel like there's still more room to go to make it
user friendly and to like make these services, like the way they think about
user profiles, like as compatible as possible.
And like speaking of like Bluesky, one of the things I really like about it is that
their usernames are domain names, which instead of like the email style.
Mastodon usernames.
I like the domain names because then it's like your blog, your identity, it's all
kind of like controlled by you, your domain name.
So I think there's a lot of potential there too, but how do you make all this
stuff work together?
Yeah, and you know, some things like you might not necessarily want to make them
work together.
You wouldn't necessarily want like a music-sharing platform to be able to take
in like upvotes from a Reddit-like platform, like that might not make sense
at all.
But I think like there's a basic like graceful degradation way of doing things
where everything degrades into a Note and most platforms can read that and for them
that's good enough.
Yeah, I think that's a really great point.
And I think it would be a shame if all platforms ended up looking exactly the
same.
So like we need that kind of like diverse user interfaces and concepts.
And yeah, as long as there's sort of like bare minimum of like, like you said, like
a note, like a microblog post, like just like some, some little bit of text that's
compatible, other services should be free to like be creative and do their own
thing.
Yeah.
So with that in mind, like, do you feel comfortable talking a little bit about
your product and you know, how it's different, how it stands on its own?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I mean, the basic idea with micro.blog has always been if we just post our blog more,
a couple things happen that are really powerful.
Like one is we control our content.
Like we can have our own domain name, here's our content.
So instead of having all the content that I posted for 10 years at twitter.com slash
whatever, it's in my domain name.
So like I can move it if I'm not happy with my web host, move it somewhere else.
This is sort of like basic web stuff, but I feel like we've gotten away from it with
the, just the centralized nature of some of these massive platforms where like
we're putting everything into Facebook and Instagram and you can't really move.
I mean, you could export your data, but you can't move your URLs because Facebook
owns them.
Um, you can't move your followers.
And so with, with micro.blog, trying to get that part first was like, encourage
people to post to their own site.
and have a timeline and have a social network experience but at your own site
with open APIs.
That was the core part.
And then from there, a lot of interesting things happen when you can, the idea that
you could have lots of networks, for example, and you could move your content
and your identity between them.
It also, I think, helps the.
different platforms have more control over like who they ban or who the, you know,
how they moderate their platforms.
Because you're not, Twitter always got into trouble with moderation because like,
if you ban someone, like they're, they're gone, they can't move somewhere else
exactly.
And so they had to be very careful about like, how are we going to moderate the
platform?
So that's something that Fediverse, I think has done a great job with.
It was like getting people to think about having lots of servers and lots of places
that we could.
and move our stuff.
Because there's always some other place that you can go to.
And it's been kind of funny in the past, you know.
I think like, deplatforming through like the late 2010s, seeing like Alex Jones and
a couple of people kicked off.
And you know, that was kind of like a jeer on maybe part of Left Twitter was that,
you know, "Haha, you don't have a place to go to anymore!" But like, on an individual
basis, that's actually a really not great situation for anyone.
Like, hey.
That was the social space where I hung out and talked to people and, you know,
exchanged ideas and sort of put my presence out there.
On the one hand, I think like communities should be able to self-regulate that and
say, you know, you're spreading hate speech, you're spreading weird conspiracy
theories, we don't want you.
But like the dominance of one platform and not really having a viable alternative
creates so many different problems and creates so many weird, like, am I walking
on thin ice for posting this kind of territory for a lot of people?
Yeah, no, it does.
I think the fewer huge platforms we have, the more problems it creates.
And so I think the world will definitely be better, the social web world, if we had
maybe not millions.
I don't think we need a platform for every type of person, every viewpoint
necessarily, but you could.
But having more...
like medium sized platforms instead of huge massive platforms.
It just it just frees things up a lot.
If you have everything on Facebook, you have billions of people just using one
platform.
It's almost like an unwinnable challenge.
It's just really difficult.
I think it's also noteworthy too, that a lot of that can dictate user behavior in
more subtle ways.
I think a good example is YouTube.
For example, if you look like any, uh, popular video, typically their thumbnail
will like be a reaction pic of them making a face and like the headline will be like
a weird question, you know, such and such happened on this date.
How?
And the guy will look, look really confused and shocked and like, they have
to say things a certain way and phrase things a certain way.
And.
Basically.
do their own version of search engine optimization for YouTube.
And so if anybody goes outside of the boundaries, they're typically not going to
be as popular, get as many views.
And so I think on the Fediverse, at least my experience with PeerTube, yeah, it's a
small platform.
I don't have to do that, though.
I can just put whatever's on my mind, and I can put a thumbnail of a leaf blowing in
the wind if I really wanted to, and people would still watch it.
Because.
Mm-hmm.
I don't have to adhere to that to be promoted.
Right.
No, no, totally.
And like I could I like making videos every once in a while, usually like
screencasts and things like that.
But I would hate to feel that I had to have those sort of like clickbait
thumbnails and those sort of like gimmicks on YouTube.
I just feel like it cheapens like everything.
I don't know.
No offense to like YouTubers that have been successful at that.
But I don't love it.
I much prefer being able to post my stuff.
And if people
want to read it, they subscribe to the podcast or they follow the feed.
And, you know, and on the consuming side, I also prefer just a straight up reverse
chronological timeline of people I follow.
I don't need recommendations.
I don't need an algorithm.
And we are very at micro.blog, we're very sort of like anti algorithms.
Like there's no, like almost nothing could be thought of as like some algorithm.
trending thing.
It's like our discover section is hand curated.
We try to lean into that sort of human side of things.
And we still can because we're still pretty small relatively.
Yeah, no, and I had seen based on the front page of micro.blogs website that it
looks like you have about maybe four or five people working for micro.blog.
Is that correct?
Sort of.
I mean, it's really, it's, it's part-time people, I guess.
That's how I would say, mostly me and Jean McDonald, who's our community manager.
And she handles a lot of the moderation and like the, like every year we usually
do a conference for folks in the community and she handles that or like podcasting
and interviewing people and then another developer that helps with the mobile stuff
and the web stuff.
And so.
Yeah, I would say me plus a handful of part-time people.
So still pretty small.
No, and that's honestly pretty, pretty cozy.
Um, I think having a small operation that's very comfortable and familiar with
the people within it is really kind of the sweet spot, especially like as a tech
startup, because once you start getting like super, super big, like the whole
company and it's, it's method of operating can change.
Um, so
to clarify, like I wish we were bigger.
Like I wish like we could have, yeah, like a little bigger, like I wish we could have
like, let's say 10 full-time people, half of which are handling like customer
support and, and community issues.
Like that would be really great.
Cause sometimes we do get overwhelmed, but yeah, I, from the start, I've never wanted
to be, we've never taken any VC money or anything like that.
It was all from the Kickstarter and from actual subscriptions that people pay.
to host their blog.
And so yeah, I would never want to be, even a hundred people would be way too
many.
I always wanna stay small, smallish, 10 people, 20 people.
No, that's terrific.
So within the last year, actually within maybe the last six months, you know, the
big platform for publishing newsletters, Substack, has been seeing a lot of
backlash as far as their policies on Nazi content, hate speech, that kind of thing.
And a lot of people are looking for alternatives.
Have you seen any migration to micro.blog as a result of that?
A little bit.
So we do have a newsletter feature.
It's kind of interesting because it doesn't work exactly like any other
newsletter platform.
So it's honestly not, it's not as easy migration in some cases.
So the way our stuff works is everything we do is around design around blogs or
there's some link to blogs.
And so the idea at the beginning was like, you're posting all these short posts.
You can have full length essays on your blog, but a lot of times it's just the
short stuff or a photo.
Like what if we had a feature where like every week it would just like collect all
those little short posts and send them out to your subscribers in an email
newsletter.
And so that, so there's some tweaks there you can do with settings, but that's the
basic way it works.
So instead of having content that's like separate from the blog, where like Monday
morning I'm gonna like type up a newsletter for my subscribers.
Like instead you just blog and then it handles sending stuff out.
And so, so I like the way that works but it's not exactly like Substack's.
So it...
Like we have definitely had people interested, but I don't really have a
good, here's exactly how you should migrate.
And we also don't have like a, any kind of monetization for your newsletter.
So if someone has lots of paid subscribers on Substack, we don't really have a
solution for them right now.
Maybe we will at some point.
But I, but I mean, I've definitely been following all the Substack stuff.
I've been fascinated with it.
They really ran into some trouble.
I don't know if this is too much of a detour, but I think they did.
They done some really interesting stuff over the years with their platform, but I
think they ran into trouble, especially when they are promoting and helping
certain types of content make money.
The problem is once you have trends or popular newsletters or featured
newsletters or...
When you're sort of reaching out, you're becoming more than just like an
infrastructure platform.
You're like, you're like really part of promoting and highlighting different
newsletters.
And then you start to, you can't just say free speech hands off.
Like we're not, we don't care what people post because you're, you're involved in it
now.
obviously, yeah, this kind of like boils down to the whole like section 230
question of like the is, is a platform a platform or is it a publisher?
Like, are you involved in the promotion of what's on your platform or are you just
this like agnostic neutral, like we're just the water company.
We don't have any opinions on who drinks the water kind of thing.
exactly.
And sometimes there's some gray area where it's hard to know.
Like there's like between your cable internet provider and Facebook, there's
like a range of different types of services.
But I feel like that's where people get into trouble is they're not exactly sure
where they are.
Are they infrastructure?
Are they helping promote people's content?
What kind of decisions are they making as part of curation and highlighting things?
And so, yeah.
It's, we think about this stuff a lot with micro.blog and I, there's a whole bunch of
stuff in my book about this, but like a lot of the things that micro.blog can't do
are to try to avoid some of these issues.
Like even just like not having algorithms, not having light counts, not having
trending, you know, tags and topics and stuff.
Like just trying to make it just simpler.
You follow people, you see what they post.
I think it helps avoid some of the traps that people fall into.
Yeah, no, that's really interesting.
So you don't have any trending algorithms.
You don't, you don't take a account of likes on posts.
You're not like boosting anything in the timeline to appear at the top.
It's just people see things in their timeline and they react to it.
And that's just primarily what you have.
That's what we have, yeah.
And if that doesn't work for you, I mean, there's a lot of other social networks.
So it's cool.
It's like, and again, that kind of gets back to like, it's okay I think if
different platforms work a little differently, there can be a space.
I think a lot of our customers appreciate that Micro.Bot can be a little bit
quieter, a little bit not as like, not as intense, like where you're always
reloading and you're always getting into an argument with someone.
We're not immune to that, but like.
trying to encourage maybe a little bit of a slower pace when possible sometimes.
No, and I think that very much suits blogging.
What's interesting, though, is it sounds like your concept of a blog, it's not just
text, which I think is what a lot of people fall back on when they try to
understand what is a blog on the Internet in 2024.
It sounds like, you know, from what I was looking at for Micro.blogs feature set,
you have a whole swath of things.
You've got themes, you've got blogging, you've got link sharing, you have a
bookshelf reading tracker.
Could you speak to some of the things that you use on Microplog every day?
Yeah, I think I use almost all the features because for them to be
prioritized, usually there's something about it that I liked.
Yeah, like for my blog, it's hosted on micro.blog, have my own domain name there.
And I used to use WordPress, before that I used Google type and other things, and I
just migrated all the posts to micro.blog, can import from a whole bunch of places.
So a lot of what I post is short, like little...
text posts, but I also post photos, you know, like this kind of stuff that I would
post to Instagram.
I post square photos, you know, on my blog.
I still like square photos.
And so it's really nice because, you know, if you go to my blog and click on the
photos link, you can see a nice, you know, grid of all my photos and I have total
control over that.
So if I want to change the theme, if I want to like change the layout, you know,
if you're technical and you want to get into sort of like the
nitty gritty of how things work.
You have a lot of control.
Under the hood, we actually use the Hugo static site generator.
So yeah, if you know Hugo or you want to learn some of it, you can kind of almost
do whatever you want.
But we have this sort of layer on top for managing posts and publishing and all this
kind of thing for handling themes and plugins.
But you have just a lot of flexibility if you want to get down there.
and fiddle with stuff.
So I use all of that and the bookshelf reading is, it kind of, we started it, I
don't even remember exactly what just like kicked it off except that I was frustrated
with, like, do I really wanna put all my content into Goodreads?
Do I really need a silo that just like has all my stuff?
And so like I'll post to my blog a little short, like, hey, I just finished reading
this book.
I really liked it.
You know, interesting story, whatever, just a few, maybe a sentence, maybe
nothing.
And so building that into micro.blog where it'll track the books you're reading, the
books you want to read, books you finished reading.
And then it can do fun stuff.
So like at the end of the year, you, it can do like an end of year post for you
with like a grid of all the thumbnails of all the book covers that you read.
And just, I love having that stuff on my blog because I mean, one of the things
about blogging that's so interesting to me is with social networks, a lot of times
it's really
It's like you post something and you forget about it and you never go back.
And I feel like with a blog sometimes you go back like I wrote something like five
years ago or this post about the books I read five years ago.
And it's just really meaningful.
I think not everybody feels that way.
I feel that way.
You know, looking back on some of the stuff that I was working on reading,
thinking about.
So yeah, we have the whole bookshelf thing and we have a whole mobile app just for
the books stuff.
It's called Epilogue.
So you can have a.
You fire up another app on your phone.
You can quickly say, I want to read this book or search for a book.
So I, it's fun.
It feels separate from, from blogging in a way, but it really isn't because it's like
the idea of just like putting stuff on your own site, you know, it's like.
I read this book.
I want to blog about it easily.
Cause even if you use like a dedicated app, like you were talking about for the
bookshelf, like all of that ultimately reincorporates back onto your own blog.
Like your blog is still the central repository of the things you're doing,
which I think is a very like novel way of understanding it, play on words.
I think the important thing is that like for users, your website can be anything
you want it to be.
And if all of your stuff lives there, you have total control over it.
You can cur...
You can curate your experience however you wish.
So that's super cool.
yeah, totally.
And it's like, we're kind of used to, it's like a website started to all look the
same.
It's like every Facebook profile page looks the same.
And yeah, you could have an image and background stuff, but like it is every
once in a while, I'll like run across a website that's like, it looks completely
different.
It's like someone's blog and they just like went crazy with it.
And I love seeing that.
I think that's one of the things that makes the web so interesting is like these
little corners of the internet where people just had fun and they customized
this.
space to just be what they want.
Yeah, it definitely feels like something that's been lost over the years.
Uh, just this kind of shift to a more cookie cutter, standardized way of
building the web.
I know that like for a while, um, it felt like every single site was using boot
strap and that's nothing against it.
It was super useful for me when I was doing rapid prototyping, but like, there,
it felt even more like every website looked the same for a while.
And then every once in a while, you'll see a guy that like,
Maybe when you move the mouse, like a unicorn vomits rainbows or like, you know,
just you can drag and drop pieces of the interface.
Or I think my favorite one that I've ever seen this, uh, this lady was a CSS
developer and every single break point of the browsers with would show a different
layout of her personal website.
So you'd, you'd move it down and suddenly the theme was different.
The picture of her was doing a different theme.
And there's like 20 different variations based on how wide your browser window was,
which was super.
that is really cool.
Yeah.
And full disclosure, Microsoft does use bootstrap, although it's been so long and
it's such an ancient version that like, I don't think it really resembles bootstrap
that much anymore.
Cause like all the buttons are customized and you know, but anyway, just throw that
out there.
I, I totally get, I totally get your comment.
No, no, I'm not criticizing web applications that use it.
It's just that for a while it seemed to be the only toolkit for the web.
And I think, I think in, I think at this point we have a lot of variation now,
thank goodness.
So, um, are there any experiences and features that you are looking to add to
micro.blog that you haven't put in yet?
Like what is like kind of your vision for what's next or what's coming?
Yeah, a lot is just improving the foundation and the plumbing that is there.
So there's always more to do for performance, fixing glitches and bugs and
things like that, because of the interesting layer of how we connect Hugo
and the timeline.
And MicroDollBlog also, at its core, can download posts from other feeds.
So like,
Mm.
You know, you don't have to host your blog with micro blog.
You could host it on WordPress and then it'll just pull in the posts.
And so it is sometimes fragile.
And so there's always more work to do to make that more robust.
I've been doing a bunch of work behind the scenes on that lately.
And in terms of like new features, you know, we have like bookmarking and
highlighting and stuff in web pages.
And there's a lot I want to do around that still.
So the, like I currently, I used to use Instapaper.
I used to use pinboard.
Mm.
and I now have just consolidated all of that to micro dot blog because they can
manage bookmarks and I can blog about the things that I'm bookmarking.
Um, and we added like tags to bookmarks and things like that.
So you can organize them.
So there's some more along those lines that will be rolling out pretty soon.
Um, which again, it seems a little bit off to the side of blogging, but it all kind
of connects together and it.
Like having micro dot blog with this kind of like suite of apps almost where it's
like you pay.
one subscription you get a bunch of little things that are next to the blog.
I found it, I don't know, I just find it really nice.
Yeah.
I was actually curious because I know that you offer a premium paid plan and you also
offer a free plan.
Could you kind of talk about how those two things differ and maybe how you arrived on
what things should be paid for and what things people could have?
Yeah, so the basic thing, basically there's free, there's $5 a month, which is
like the standard plan that most people probably should have if they wanna use
micro.blog.
And then there's micro.blog premium.
And then we also have like a family plan, which is like if you want a blog that has
like multiple people, kind of like a team that helps maintain the blog.
But at its core, it's the $5 and the $10.
The free is like most of the stuff we've talked about.
So like following people, the timeline, replying to people, like the book stuff
too, like keeping track of what books you're reading, all that kind of stuff.
That's all free.
The apps are all free.
The apps are all open source to Mac iOS, Android.
Um, but for free, we don't host the blog for you.
That's the catch.
So, uh, if you, if you want sort of things to be more integrated and just taking care
of the $5 a month plan, now we host the blog for you, like, and, and there's.
More or less no limits on that.
As long as it's a personal blog and you're not backing up your computer to your blog,
as many posts as you want, long posts, short posts, photos, whatever.
And then at the $10, we add podcast hosting and newsletters and stuff.
That's awesome.
That's super cool.
So.
And yeah, and I like, I mean, honestly, I like our pricing.
Like something about $5 a month, I just really like.
Like pricing, everything goes up and it's like, actually good luck finding a blog
host that is not either free or more than $5.
So like, you know, free, you'll have ads and things like that, or you self-host it
and you pay your own hosting.
But I've always liked the sort of like, it's $5, you know, a lot of people can
afford $5 and we've never changed the price.
And
We may never change it, but we'll keep making like sort of, you know, the bigger,
the bigger tiers, like more valuable and that sort of thing.
But, uh, I try to keep it as simple as possible.
It's like, it does a bunch of stuff and.
Yeah, here it is.
Yeah, no, that's super cool.
What are your thoughts on the direction that the Fediverse is going with Reddit
and Twitter?
It seems like more and more people are coming by the day sometimes, or sometimes
we have these huge bursts of users coming in.
I know that through ActivityPub, MicroBlog is a part of that.
Like, what does that landscape look like from your vantage point?
so interesting.
It's honestly, it's, I think it's going really well.
I guess I'll say that because like when I used to complain about Twitter, when I
started writing my book about like, let's have more open APIs and things like that,
not new ideas, but just like as I'm exploring the stuff, honestly didn't think
we'd be as far as we are right now.
I really think it's looking good.
Like there's so many people now that are aware of the problems of big networks, big
ad-based companies, they're aware of privacy issues.
Um, and so I really like what's happening.
And there's also a lot of innovation, people trying new things, people forking
projects, trying, you know, trying to take things in different directions.
Uh, and then there's weird stuff.
I don't mean weird in a bad way, but like we're talking about the book stuff.
You have like bookworm and like Fedover stuff.
That's just for a specific peer to stuff.
That's like for a specific type of content, but that's still compatible with
the Fedover.
So I really like where things are going.
I think in general.
That.
Like where I think at some point, Mastodon might not be like the 90% of the market.
And actually, I think if one sort of player has most of the market, it does
kind of create some problems because they don't necessarily have to work on
compatibility as much.
Everybody else has to be compatible with them.
The IndieWeb talks about one of their principles is kind of like monoculture of
like, you know, there's just like one.
thing that dominates everything and that can create problems.
I feel like it's about to be just turned upside down with Threads because Threads,
they're starting to experiment with ActivityPub support.
It's going a little slower than I would have guessed.
They just have it enabled for a couple of counts.
It didn't work with MicroDogBlog at first.
I had to figure out what was wrong and I fixed it.
So MicroDogBlog now you can follow the Threads users.
There's only a few that have it enabled.
But when threads actually opens that up, it's gonna be really interesting.
And I'm not sure what's gonna happen.
But I've kind of been on the record from the beginning though of like embrace the
threads, joining the Fediverse, don't block them.
Because if you had asked me like five years ago, 10 years ago, if Facebook would
like just completely do a 180 instead of like shutting down their API, they would
just become more open.
I would say like that's a really good thing.
You know, even if I disagree with a lot of decisions they've made as a platform, even
though I think they've caused an actual lot of problems, if it's more open and
compatible with other platforms, that generally I think is just going to be
good.
So we'll see what happens.
But I think it's early days.
I think things are just really interesting from here on.
Yeah, absolutely.
So from the vantage point of a huge influx of people, are you concerned about
backlash to connect to them or trust and safety issues?
How do you think MicroBlog is gonna have to deal with that?
That's a great question.
And I think we don't know how, so it sounds to me like Threads, their current
plan is not to just enable for everybody.
So it'll be kind of like opt in.
Yeah, it'll be like, if I'm on Threads, I can like check and check box and now
people can follow me.
So I don't expect at the beginning, it'll be too, honestly, I don't know.
To be honest, I just don't know.
Like I, and it kind of gets back to, I wish we had a little bigger team because
you could imagine a situation where there are a lot of
kind of trust and safety issues, a lot of things that we need to stay on top of.
Um, so I, I can't, I don't know.
I honestly, I can't even predict how it's going to go, but it's, it's definitely
going to shake things up because you're going to go from mastodon having again,
like 90% or whatever of the Fediverse.
I don't know what the number is, but a lot, a big share of the Fediverse to all
of a sudden threads being the big share of the Fediverse, um, and threads.
Like they're trying to do, I think that team is trying to do the right thing.
They're trying to have an API and they're trying to like, you know, be open.
Um, but at the same time, like, I'm not going to blame anyone that's, that doesn't
totally trust them in the way they would trust, um, you know, mastodon and people
that are just like really all in on the open web.
Yeah, 100%.
So I also wanted to talk a little bit about your book.
You've mentioned it a few times, and I think it's important to give that a
highlight as well.
Could you talk a little bit about Indie Microblogging and your work on it?
Yeah, yeah.
So this came out of the Kickstarter project.
The whole thing is on the web now at book.micro.blog and you can kind of poke
around.
It really turned into this sprawling kind of project.
I don't know what I was getting into.
It's probably way too long.
It has lots of like personal diversions where I talk about my thoughts on this.
But it's finally sort of wrapped up.
I have an EPUB version and then I'll have the print and PDF version.
to follow shortly.
But the idea was really just like, how can we rethink, again, not to repeat myself
too much what I've already said, but like, we have these big platforms, like how can
we rethink things a little bit so that everything has open APIs and so that
things are as centered around blogging as possible.
So you post to your own site.
So there's stuff about the Fediverse, there's stuff about ActivityPub.
Some of it's technical, like here's what the JSON looks for ActivityPub, and here's
how Webfinger works.
And some of it, on the Indie website too, like here's how MicroPub works if you
wanna post to your website with that API.
And then some of it's more philosophical, just like, where did all this come from?
Like, what happened with Twitter?
What happened with Tumblr?
Like what happened with the early web and the blogosphere?
Yeah, well, you know, thank you so much for joining me today, Mantin.
This has been a really enlightening conversation.
And it's always exciting to get into the weeds with any new platform.
I say new as in new to me.
I know that Microplot's been around for a while.
Before we depart, is there anything that you'd like to share with our audience?
Things on your mind, advice for people trying to start out building on open APIs,
anything of that nature?
I don't know.
Yeah, just I'm excited.
And I think you can almost, if you're just starting out and you're like embracing the
Fediverse, whether you're a developer or just posting stuff, like I don't think
there's necessarily a wrong way to approach it.
Like I think everyone is coming from a different perspective.
And so yeah, see what's out there.
See how you think you fit into the world.
I do think there's something to like having our
space on the internet be something we control that is just, it's kind of like a
foundation that will matter no matter what like the exact protocols like end up
looking like.
No, and I, you know, I think for a while the, you control your own data, you own
your data, you own your online experience.
Like I think in a lot of ways people didn't necessarily grasp what that meant.
Cause data at the end of the day, like you think of the word, it's just text and
numbers, right?
No, it's like, you know, your personal experiences and your content and the
people you talk to online and the, the private shots, the private thoughts that
you share and.
I think giving that a tangible face, like a blog or your personal website or
something you can basically control every aspect of is such an important thing for
people to understand.
Like you're not just moving some JSON blob around, you're like actually building your
online spot that you hang out in that's cozy for you.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
And there's just so much potential too.
And just the fact that we are at the point now where you can like move your followers
between platforms and things don't just completely break is really, I mean, at
some point, we're gonna take that for granted at some point, but it really is
like a level up sort of the social web.
I'm really excited.
I'm excited too.
Well, thank you all for listening to the Decentred Podcast.
I'm Sean Tilly.
You can follow us on wedistribute at news at wedistribute.org for our main site
through ActivityPub, or you can follow us on a variety of platforms that we
cross-post to using a posse-like method.
You can follow us on, let me recite what they are.
You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Nostr, BlueSky.
And you can also support us on opencollective.com slash we distribute and
patreon.com slash we distribute.
You can also follow Manton on micro.blog slash Manton or manton at manton.blog, is
it?
Or manton at manton.org.
Thank you all for listening.
You've been the best.
Thanks.