Micro.blog and owning your words with Manton Reece
Summary
Scott Hanselman interviews Manton Reece, the founder and CEO of Micro.blog, a platform dedicated to helping people own their words on the internet. The conversation traces the origins of Micro.blog back to 2017, born from frustration with centralized social platforms like Twitter locking down developer access and controlling user data. Manton emphasizes the core principle of having your own space on the web, preferably with your own domain name, as a fundamental right and a more sustainable model for online presence.
They delve into the practical and philosophical challenges of the modern web, including link rot, the friction of technical setup (like DNS records), and the addictive, algorithm-driven nature of walled gardens. Manton explains how Micro.blog aims to be a “boutique” or quieter space, consciously avoiding infinite scroll, algorithmic timelines, and the amplification of divisive content. The platform’s discover section is hand-curated, focusing on content rather than follower counts, to foster a different kind of community engagement.
A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the Indie Web concept of POSSE (Publish on Your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere). Manton details how Micro.blog automates cross-posting to services like Mastodon and Bluesky, allowing users to maintain ownership while still participating in larger networks. They also cover the recent launch of Micro One, a $1/month plan designed to lower friction and reach more people, and the technical architecture behind the service, which uses Hugo as a static site generator for speed, reliability, and simplicity.
The episode concludes with practical advice for new users, highlighting Micro.blog’s commitment to data portability through features like GitHub export and Internet Archive pings. Manton and Scott advocate for just starting to blog without overthinking, emphasizing that everyone has a story to tell and that the primary goal should be owning your corner of the web.
Recommendations
Concepts
- POSSE (Publish on Your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) — A core Indie Web principle discussed at length. It involves publishing content to your own website first and then automatically or manually syndicating copies out to social networks to maintain ownership while participating elsewhere.
- The Indie Web — The broader movement of which Micro.blog is a part. It emphasizes owning your identity and data on the web, using your own domain, and leveraging open protocols for interoperability.
- The Fediverse — The interconnected network of servers (like Mastodon, Micro.blog) that use the ActivityPub protocol. Allows users on different platforms to follow and interact with each other in a decentralized way.
People
- Andy Baio — Referenced by Scott in the context of making the web “weird again,” reminiscent of the early, creative days of the web like Geocities.
- Anil Dash — Mentioned as an example of an early Twitter user who gained a large follower advantage by being in the platform’s initial suggested follow list, illustrating the problems of centralized popularity.
Platforms
- Micro.blog — The main subject of the episode. A platform and community focused on indie blogging, owning your content, and POSSE (Publish on Your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere). Offers plans starting at $1/month.
- fedadb.org — Mentioned as an aggregator site that shows statistics for different Fediverse platforms, including Micro.blog, tracking the growth of the open social web.
- Hugo — The static site generator that powers Micro.blog behind the scenes. Praised for its simplicity, speed, and the flexibility it offers users to customize their blogs with themes.
Topic Timeline
- 00:00:00 — Introduction to Manton Reece and Micro.blog — Scott Hanselman introduces his guest, Manton Reece, the founder and CEO of Micro.blog. They discuss the platform’s origins in early 2017, launched via a Kickstarter. Manton shares his long history with blogging since the early 2000s and his growing frustration with centralized social platforms that lock down user data and control, which inspired the creation of Micro.blog.
- 00:01:34 — The problem of link rot and ephemeral online presence — Scott illustrates the fragility of personal websites by describing how often links to actors’ sites are broken due to expired certs or abandoned services. Manton agrees, noting it’s a huge problem as URLs rot daily. He explains that Micro.blog tries to combat this by archiving links and keeping blogs online even if a user stops paying, unless they explicitly want it removed, to help content last longer on the internet.
- 00:04:25 — Scale, the Fediverse, and the philosophy of no one in charge — Scott asks about the number of blogs on Micro.blog. Manton avoids specific numbers, citing spam accounts and the complexity of measurement, but mentions fedadb.org as an aggregator for Fediverse stats. They discuss the core philosophy of the open social web: no single entity is in charge. It’s about people owning their words and using protocols like ActivityPub to create interoperable choice.
- 00:06:44 — What compels people to use walled gardens? — Scott asks what keeps people in walled gardens despite the benefits of owning your space. Manton points to the effortless signup, addictive algorithmic timelines, and the dopamine hit of engagement (likes, retweets). He contrasts this with Micro.blog’s goal of providing a quieter space without those manipulative pulls, appealing to users who want a different pace of interaction.
- 00:08:15 — The boutique approach vs. scaling problems — Scott uses the metaphor of a “boutique” to describe a small, delightful shop versus a massive department store. He asks how Manton balances growth with indie web principles. Manton states he’s fine with a smaller scale, as massive platforms create new problems with content moderation and business incentives. He prefers a smaller company and sees benefits in smaller, interoperable Fediverse communities.
- 00:10:27 — Discoverability and hand-curated content — Scott notes that discoverability seems like a low priority on Micro.blog. Manton explains it’s a conscious decision to avoid the problems of trending topics and algorithmic amplification. The Discover section is hand-curated by a human, showing a snapshot of recent posts. This creates a quieter, slower web focused on content rather than popularity, though he acknowledges it might sometimes be too hard to find people.
- 00:17:28 — Explaining POSSE (Publish on Your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) — Scott brings up the fundamental Indie Web concept of POSSE. Manton explains it as posting to your own site first (where you control it) and then syndicating copies out to other platforms like Mastodon or Bluesky to stay connected. He details how Micro.blog automates this cross-posting, adapting posts for each service’s API, though some platforms like Instagram have locked down APIs making it harder.
- 00:20:53 — **Micro.blog’s pricing: Micro One for 1/month “Micro One” plan, which includes hosting your own domain, photo hosting, and podcast hosting. Manton explains it’s a recent experiment to reach more people and reduce friction. He clarifies the domain registration fee is separate. The goal is simplicity and transparency, with standard plans at 10/month, all featuring straightforward pricing without gimmicks.
- 00:24:15 — Technical architecture: Hugo and static sites — Scott, as a developer, asks about the technical stack. Manton confirms Micro.blog uses the Hugo static site generator, having moved from Jekyll. He praises Hugo’s flexibility and explains the architecture: after publishing, the platform generates static HTML files served separately. This makes blogs fast, reliable, and likely to stay online even if the main platform has an outage, aligning with the philosophy of simplicity.
- 00:28:25 — AI features and user control — Scott highlights the transparency around AI on Micro.blog. Manton explains the platform uses AI for summarizing photos and generating podcast transcripts. A global account checkbox lets users completely opt out of AI processing of their content. This allows the team to develop useful AI tools while respecting users who have concerns about privacy, energy use, or data being sent to external services like OpenAI.
- 00:30:10 — Getting started with Micro.blog and data portability — Scott asks for onboarding advice. Manton suggests starting by enabling cross-posting to other platforms you use and importing existing content. He also emphasizes thinking about whether you want a custom domain. Scott gives kudos for Micro.blog’s strong data portability features, including export to GitHub and automatic pinging of the Internet Archive. Manton stresses the importance of letting users get their content out, including photos, to be true to open web principles.
- 00:33:45 — Final thoughts: Just start blogging — Scott references his old blog post “Your Words Are Wasted” about throwing keystrokes into walled gardens. He and Manton encourage listeners to start a blog somewhere, whether on Micro.blog or elsewhere, and not to overthink it. Manton recalls his own first, self-deprecating blog post and argues everyone has a story. The key is to own your corner of the web and just begin posting.
Episode Info
- Podcast: Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman
- Author: Scott Hanselman
- Category: Technology Science Education How To
- Published: 2025-02-06T21:00:00Z
- Duration: 00:35:55
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/b9630eb0-30de-0132-be16-5f4c86fd3263/episode/58a69d59-44ac-4df2-82ef-02752bf1283b
- Episode UUID: 58a69d59-44ac-4df2-82ef-02752bf1283b
Podcast Info
- Name: Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://www.hanselminutes.com
- UUID: b9630eb0-30de-0132-be16-5f4c86fd3263
Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, I’m Scott Hanselman. This is another episode of Hansel Minutes. Today, I’m chatting with
[00:00:16] Matt and Reese, who is the CEO, founder, and boss in charge at micro.blog. How are you,
[00:00:23] sir?
[00:00:24] Good. Thanks for having me. Pretty good.
[00:00:25] This is just a wonderful and delightful thing that you have done, but this has been going
[00:00:29] on for a while. You started this in 2017. Is that right?
[00:00:34] Yeah, the very beginning of 2017. I wanted to start the year with something new. I did
[00:00:38] a Kickstarter. The rest is history, I guess.
[00:00:40] Have you always felt like that? I’ve been blogging since 2000, and I’ve always hosted
[00:00:45] my own thing. I never really thought about the friction involved in getting a domain,
[00:00:50] registering certs. We wrote our own blog engine. It just felt like a very natural time. We
[00:00:55] were all building the web. For a lot of people, just getting a domain…
[00:00:59] That’s too much, and signing up is too much.
[00:01:03] Yeah, it’s true. It’s still hard for people. Even today, on micro.blog, we can register
[00:01:09] the domain for you now, which helps a lot because they just type in the domain they
[00:01:14] want to register. We can configure it, and WordPress.com and other services do that same
[00:01:19] kind of thing now, too. It helps a lot, but there’s still so much confusion about DNS
[00:01:24] records, and this C name what, and this A record what. It’s very confusing for people.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] Yeah.
[00:01:29] I know this is really an example slash analogy, but I really like interacting with B-level
[00:01:34] actors. Not like your Tom Cruises that have a whole team, but like regular working actors.
[00:01:39] Whenever I watch a show, I’ll go and I’ll see a secondary actor who’s killing it, and
[00:01:45] then I’ll go and find them on social media, and I’ll give them a compliment. Hey, I saw
[00:01:48] you as detective whatever on such and such a show, and inevitably, they have an Instagram,
[00:01:53] then they have link in bio, and I click on it, and it’s an expired cert. It’s a deactivated
[00:01:59] squarespace site it’s a random you know it’s just a broken url it’s it’s not happened once it’s
[00:02:05] happened dozens of times and i realize it’s because oh this is a regular person they don’t
[00:02:11] have a team they just yeah made a blog one day and they lost the password or they didn’t redo the
[00:02:16] and their online presence doesn’t exist anymore and that’s just so emblematic of like how urls
[00:02:23] are rotting every day on the internet it’s a it’s a really big problem and yeah if you go back
[00:02:30] anybody who’s been blogging even just five years ten years i mean so many links are broken now
[00:02:36] it’s almost like the kind of default state that things expire and wither away and it’s a it’s an
[00:02:43] issue one of the things that i we do a couple things to try to combat that a little bit like
[00:02:48] when you link to things we archive them and there’s all sorts of things behind the scenes but
[00:02:53] also
[00:02:53] once you’ve paid for your blog we we keep it if you don’t want it anymore like unless you
[00:02:59] unless you don’t want it anymore we keep it so like just helping a little bit things last on
[00:03:04] the internet it’s an it’s an issue the internet archive is a huge help but of course you know
[00:03:10] they had an outage you know last month or something there it’s it is even just having
[00:03:15] one copy of the web is not enough the uh you did this in 2017 but it must have been in your head
[00:03:20] before that it was i mean it
[00:03:23] it i don’t have the years in front of me but i became really frustrated with
[00:03:27] twitter uh you know a few years before that locking down developer access and then before
[00:03:33] that i’ve been blogging you know since early 2000s over 20 years now and so blogging and
[00:03:41] just having your own space on the internet was always in my mind and when i became frustrated
[00:03:45] with like centralized platforms having so much control and locking down our data and our accounts
[00:03:51] and what we can do that sort of made me kind of frustrated with the fact that i didn’t have the
[00:03:53] with, you know, the idea that, Hey, you have your own space on the internet. You have your
[00:03:57] own domain name. You can do what you want with it. And that also unlocks different things
[00:04:02] that social platforms I think can do. Once you give people an identity, once you give
[00:04:06] them their own, their own space. So that all sort of came together. And then I launched
[00:04:10] micro.blog and just keep improving it ever since. I mean, it’s just grown so much. It’s
[00:04:16] almost, it’s not unrecognizable. The vision is exactly the same as it was 2017, but there’s
[00:04:22] so much more that we’ve been able to add to it.
[00:04:25] How many, how many blogs are there?
[00:04:26] I don’t have that in front of me. We don’t really advertise how many users.
[00:04:31] Yeah. The blog, I mean the blogs and accounts can have more than one blog too. So it’s a
[00:04:37] little bit, not an exact science, I guess, how you measure it.
[00:04:40] You can’t like point a number of humans, but.
[00:04:43] Yeah. And also I hate, so we actually fedadb.org is a like aggregator for different Fediverse
[00:04:51] sites.
[00:04:52] It’s mastered on and whatnot. And we are in that now. And so you can see like micro.blog,
[00:04:57] like here’s how many Fediverse accounts there are. And like, you know, it’s up 1% or whatever.
[00:05:01] It’s a really interesting way to look at stats on the Fediverse. But I also always feel a
[00:05:07] little bit weird pointing to that because, you know, there’s spam accounts that people
[00:05:11] created that that’s a big problem. We’re always fighting like people registering and trying
[00:05:16] to make content farms with just random text on the internet for whatever reason. And so
[00:05:20] the numbers are always.
[00:05:22] That’s fair.
[00:05:23] I don’t know.
[00:05:24] It is reasonable to point out if you use fedadb.org as an example, it’s a good-sized
[00:05:28] European country and, you know, certainly a billion plus posts out there in the Fediverse
[00:05:33] and micro.blog being a big part of moving the Fediverse around. The point though is
[00:05:39] that there’s no one in charge. And I think that’s the part that’s so wonderful about
[00:05:43] all of this. Like whether it be, you know, RSS in the early days or ActivityPub, like
[00:05:50] it’s just a bunch of people sitting around.
[00:05:51] It’s a bunch of people sitting around saying, how do we all own our own words and then move
[00:05:55] our words around in a way that makes everything interoperable? Like it’s all about choice,
[00:06:00] isn’t it?
[00:06:01] Yeah, absolutely. And like there’s something giving people a space, preferably they have
[00:06:06] their own domain name. We encourage people to have that kind of be able to take their
[00:06:10] content back from just posting to Facebook, just posting to Twitter, X, Instagram, having
[00:06:16] their own photo blog. That’s a huge thing. People love posting photos and sharing that
[00:06:19] stuff.
[00:06:20] But they just are frustrated with like, why are all my photos in Meta’s control? Like
[00:06:25] why can’t I have that on my own site? And then if my own site can be connected to the
[00:06:29] larger Fediverse, so people on Mastron can follow it, they can see when I’ve posted a
[00:06:32] photo. It’s just very powerful. And I feel like it’s still, we’ve been doing this so
[00:06:36] long. He said 2017, but I feel like we’re still just scratching the surface of where
[00:06:41] this, this open social web can go.
[00:06:44] Is it the frictionless signup or is it the algorithm, the infinite scroll algorithm,
[00:06:50] or is it the discoverability? What is it that keeps causing people are compelling people
[00:06:55] to sign up for walled gardens?
[00:06:57] That’s a great question. I mean, it is very easy and I think there’s a lot we can
[00:07:01] learn from walled gardens in terms of how they make it so effortless, how we can, because
[00:07:07] it is historically, it’s been, it hasn’t been hard to start a blog. I mean, you could fire
[00:07:11] up blogger in the old days or Tumblr. It’s fairly easy, but there’s still friction, especially
[00:07:17] if you want to get your own domain name in the mix. There’s a lot.
[00:07:20] Yeah.
[00:07:20] Yeah.
[00:07:20] Yeah.
[00:07:20] There’s a little technical hurdles you have to jump through. So I think there is, we can
[00:07:23] learn things from making it easier for users to get started, but on an open platform. And
[00:07:29] then there is this sort of, I think there is an addictive nature to some of these platforms
[00:07:33] where the algorithmic timeline’s always showing you things you might want to see and it’s
[00:07:37] infinite. So you just keep reloading. And then the sort of dopamine hit of like someone
[00:07:42] liked my post and someone retweeted this. And I think there, there is something there,
[00:07:47] the engagement part that gets people.
[00:07:49] Just they, they keep coming back. And then of course, Facebook is emailing them. If they’re
[00:07:53] not coming back, Hey, you missed like these three posts that your friends posted. And
[00:07:58] we don’t do any of that at micro.blog. I feel like there are people that not everybody,
[00:08:04] but there are enough people that want a sort of quieter space on the web. You can interact
[00:08:09] with people, but it’s not, it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly being pulled back in.
[00:08:14] Hmm.
[00:08:15] When I started working in software 30 years ago, I went to work at Microsoft.com and I
[00:08:19] was working at a, um, a consultancy that did not want to be a big consultancy. They explicitly,
[00:08:26] this was during the, or the first.com bubble and everybody was trying to go, uh, you know,
[00:08:31] go public. And when I met the VP of this, uh, the run, the other co-founder slash VP
[00:08:35] of this thing, he says, we are running a boutique here. And that word boutique has stuck with
[00:08:41] me for years because I just love it. It’s like, I’m making a lovely little delightful
[00:08:46] shop here on main street. Stop by, enjoy the space. I’m making a lovely little shop here
[00:08:47] on main street. Stop by, enjoy the space. I’m making a lovely little shop here on main street.
[00:08:48] Stop by, enjoy the space. I’m making a lovely little shop here on main street. Stop by, enjoy the
[00:08:49] space. And then take off. But we have, we’re not trying to be Macy’s. We’re not trying
[00:08:53] to be the next big thing. How do you balance the, you know, micro blog could take over
[00:08:58] the world and be the next big thing with the, with, you know, your, your fundamental things
[00:09:04] you stand for, you know, the protocols and the principles of the indie web.
[00:09:07] Yeah, absolutely. I think that when platforms get too big, new problems are created in terms
[00:09:15] of content moderation and you know, especially ad based platforms.
[00:09:19] there’s these incentives that a business is drawn to when they’re when they get really big and i
[00:09:25] would love to avoid that we never need to be a billion people a million people we are fine in
[00:09:31] the you know tens of thousands a hundred if we ever had like a hundred thousand people that would
[00:09:37] be like we’d probably like have to shut things down and just like no more people because i think
[00:09:41] smaller platforms uh there’s benefits especially on the fediverse where you have these smaller
[00:09:45] communities that can interoperate and you you can have like local people in that community kind of
[00:09:52] managing the the community and dealing with reports of problems and staying on top of it when you get
[00:09:58] too big it just creates a lot of problems so i am fine i like the boutique i’ve never used that term
[00:10:04] to describe myself but i like that small company it doesn’t need thousands of employees i prefer it
[00:10:10] that way personally i think there’s something to like the kind of small quarters of the internet
[00:10:14] yeah
[00:10:15] andy baio was like we should make the web weird again like we missed the weird web and just like
[00:10:20] geocities that said though i i’m i’ve been i did a lot of research and i’ve been poking around and
[00:10:27] you know from going to micro dot blog where are all the blogs discoverability seems to be a low
[00:10:35] priority because you’re not going out of your way to say look who’s here like you could have george
[00:10:39] takei and i would have no way of knowing because he’s not on the home page right so like why not
[00:10:44] make it so people
[00:10:45] can be seen and is that that seems like a conscious decision it is a conscious decision but there’s
[00:10:50] always this balance and we don’t always get it right i think and so one of the unique parts
[00:10:55] about micro dot blog is i had this idea that when you’re constantly throwing you know here’s the
[00:11:01] trending hashtags and you’re just constantly all these ways to like slice the fire hose of data
[00:11:09] and tweets together it kind of creates problems for like different communities kind of clashing
[00:11:15] and there’s a potential for uh people piggybacking on other people’s conversations and sort of being
[00:11:21] hateful and there’s just problems that pop up so we’ve tried to take the opposite approach a little
[00:11:26] bit quieter a little bit slower and in fact the discover section of micro dot blog is just hand
[00:11:31] curated it’s not automatic it’s not algorithmic so there’s a human actually going through and
[00:11:37] saying like here’s some here are some people in some posts recently that kind of a snapshot of
[00:11:41] what is on the network that you might find interesting and it’s a lot of people that are
[00:11:45] it is limiting in some ways and it is um maybe just a little harder to find people sometimes
[00:11:54] and i acknowledge that like i said like sometimes i think the balance is maybe too far in the
[00:12:00] the other direction maybe we need to get make it a little more easier to be discovered
[00:12:03] sure but also that’s part of blogs and the web like you start a blog and at the very beginning
[00:12:10] you are sort of writing into the void a little bit and i think the people that are interested
[00:12:15] in micro dot blog are going to be a little bit more interested in micro dot blog and i think
[00:12:15] they have to be okay with that to start with like you’re not going to start with 10 000 followers
[00:12:21] you’re going to start with just there has to be a reason that you’re writing and you’re posting
[00:12:28] your photos and things that you want to share even if you don’t have millions of people looking
[00:12:34] at it and so it’s it is tricky yeah but that’s that’s sort of the the the way we’ve you know
[00:12:42] slower a little more hand curated
[00:12:44] a little
[00:12:45] harder to discover people but there’s there’s new ways that people are being discovered on
[00:12:50] social platforms that we can connect to also i do like your your statement about the quieter
[00:12:55] web like i’m on micro dot blog slash discover right now just to give folks that are listening
[00:13:00] a bit of a sense of the kind of vibes we’re talking about you’ve got books and tv and music
[00:13:04] and podcasts sure but there’s also bread and gardening and writing you know what i mean
[00:13:10] like and and the first picture is like a picture of someone’s backyard in the snow
[00:13:15] it is if you if you if you don’t want a an environment that shouts at you this is probably
[00:13:20] the place to hang out yeah and i think i think a lot of people do want that and that’s not to say
[00:13:25] you shouldn’t and there’s not like a lot of politics in there or like really divisive topics
[00:13:31] we’re not like censoring anyone i mean you can put whatever you know politics or any you know
[00:13:38] whatever thing you want on your own blog it’s your own space but that doesn’t mean it needs to be
[00:13:43] amplified to everybody and
[00:13:45] so that that’s sort of where our discover timeline comes into the into play but there’s
[00:13:51] also there’s so much room for improvement too and there’s so many interesting things people are
[00:13:55] doing like i found that the like the blue skies their starter packs i thought were really
[00:13:59] interesting where you go here’s a here are like 20 people that i recommend you follow when you
[00:14:04] get started i think there’s things we can do like that um well so let me let me cut you off there
[00:14:10] because there was a lot of tension in the early days of twitter 2006 2007
[00:14:15] i remember anil dash was one of the biggest most followed people on he was an early blogger
[00:14:20] and he used to be one of the first people that anyone followed and people would say well he got
[00:14:25] an unfair advantage yeah because he’s like you know twitter sign up person number nine you sign
[00:14:32] up and it’s like here’s a couple of people to follow here’s a couple people to follow is a
[00:14:36] starter pack of sorts and then you know three days into twitter he’s got a half million followers or
[00:14:40] whatever and we’re like hey hang on a second so starter packs can draw attention to people who
[00:14:45] maybe don’t follow them and they’re like hey hang on a second so starter packs can draw attention to
[00:14:45] people who maybe don’t want attention but also could indirectly and no no hate to anil but i’m
[00:14:50] just using him as an example um who’s lucky enough to be in the starter pack there’s a thing happening
[00:14:54] on threads right now where tech threads is a thing that was invented by a bunch of people
[00:15:00] and then threads is making starter packs complete rip off of blue sky and a bunch of the people who
[00:15:05] made tech threads are not in the starter pack so then everyone’s like look at me you know you
[00:15:10] just can’t please anyone so maybe you just be quiet and please no one so a couple things on
[00:15:15] that i first of all i i think starter packs are interesting because they can be a little more
[00:15:21] distributed than that like they you could have like thousands of starter packs for like they’re
[00:15:25] like here’s people that like are authors and people who love books and follow these people
[00:15:30] and we actually kind of we can connect with those starter packs now you can link them on
[00:15:35] micro.blog and follow those people which is i think really powerful but to your first point i
[00:15:40] also remember the sort of twitter follower list and i think one of the problems was it was this
[00:15:45] global like everybody follow these people and they did they did sort of have an unfair advantage
[00:15:51] and there was this uh snowball effect of like well yeah once they’re on that list then they
[00:15:56] have a million followers and then everybody thinks they’re amazing because they’re going to
[00:16:00] have you know a thousand times more likes than everybody else and i think it’s better to get
[00:16:05] back to like the content speaking for itself so on our discover page at the very very beginning
[00:16:10] you know six seven years ago we had something like here are some people to follow
[00:16:15] and we pretty quickly scrapped it and instead it’s it’s kind of a snapshot of here are recent
[00:16:21] posts in chronological reverse chronological order so instead of being about people it’s about the
[00:16:26] content so so yeah that post of someone’s backyard with the snow like if you like the
[00:16:31] the photos that they’re posting follow them and i it also naturally kind of turns over because
[00:16:39] it’s recent posts so i i’m very conscious of this i think it is a problem when people
[00:16:45] gain a certain amount of followers and then they just sort of naturally become more and more
[00:16:50] popular and somewhere in microdouble we have an article or a blog post that’s like it’s not a
[00:16:56] popularity contest it’s not about like counts it’s not about follower counts we don’t show
[00:16:59] follower counts anywhere you know so like if you like that photo of the snow and you think they’re
[00:17:05] going to post more beautiful photos or you like what they’re saying follow them it doesn’t matter
[00:17:10] you’re not going to be affected by the fact that that photo got
[00:17:15] someone who posted a photo that was also amazing that only got five likes
[00:17:18] there’s a a fundamental uh concept called posse publish on your own site syndicate elsewhere
[00:17:28] can you talk about posse and why that’s why that’s so fundamental yeah absolutely i mean
[00:17:33] it’s kind of getting back to taking your content like you post to your own site first hey instead
[00:17:41] of like thinking about like i’m going to wake up in the morning and i’m going to tweet something
[00:17:45] to instagram i post to my own blog where i control it and then i copy it out to other platforms so
[00:17:52] that i can still stay connected to people so yeah posse is a long time like indie web principle and
[00:17:58] there’s a lot of different ways to do it of course in microdouble we have built in ways to like
[00:18:02] automatically cross this out to maston blue sky whatever and unfortunately there are still some
[00:18:08] platforms that have locked down like public api so it’s kind of harder to automatically post to
[00:18:13] instagram for example
[00:18:15] but there are enough that do it that it’s it’s just a great way you post to your own site
[00:18:20] you control it you can do whatever you want you can you know customize your own site you have
[00:18:25] ownership of it you can switch you know hosting providers but you send a copy out automatically to
[00:18:31] yeah blue sky and then you have the followers there that can see what you’re up to so it’s kind
[00:18:38] of a in some ways it’s like kind of a compromise admitting that you know not everybody has got to
[00:18:43] have my blog in their rss reader
[00:18:45] that’s okay there are some people that just are on social networks and i also want to reach those
[00:18:50] people yeah and then the inverse of that is publish elsewhere syndicate to your own site
[00:18:57] which is that it’s pull versus push and uh you know honestly i have done both and neither of
[00:19:03] these by just simply using the clipboard like people that’s also yeah that’s people will
[00:19:07] constantly email me how are you doing that how are you copying to mastodon and blue sky is
[00:19:10] clipboard yeah you know and so some people prefer that too because then you can kind of like tweak
[00:19:15] one a little bit for each network that’s fine yeah but i have to say though i am always impressed
[00:19:20] when i see someone i use tantic or or andy bio as an example where it’s like you go to their website
[00:19:26] and it’s clear that it all starts there and then it finds its way out but most of those are bespoke
[00:19:32] and i think micro.blog is a great way to get that kind of an experience with and you’ve done all the
[00:19:39] engineering yeah and we tried to like i built it that way the very first version of micro.blog didn’t
[00:19:45] we we call it kind of cross-posting because posse it feels a little technical sometimes but it’s
[00:19:50] sure it’s catching on as a term now so i think we’ll probably use it more than we did a few years
[00:19:54] ago but we didn’t have cross-posting out to other networks and i added it for twitter because i
[00:20:02] i was frustrated that there weren’t any good solutions out there for copying to twitter in
[00:20:07] a way that i was happy with so like there were places that could automatically copy your posts
[00:20:13] but like the link they put like a link in there and then they would copy your posts and then they
[00:20:15] would put links in back to your blog that i didn’t want like i wanted if i had a short post on my own
[00:20:20] blog that was just like 100 characters i wanted it to feel like a tweet when it was copied out to
[00:20:26] twitter so that’s where it started where i was like i gotta build my own thing and then from
[00:20:31] there now we have like eight or nine different services that we support and each one is coded
[00:20:36] specifically for that api so it adapts the post as best it can to you know thinking about like
[00:20:42] if it needs to be truncated if there needs to be a link if it needs to be a link if it needs to be
[00:20:45] uploaded photos to that service that it tries to do the right thing automatically i think the thing
[00:20:53] that i want to hit as we get towards the end here which i think is impossible and i want to
[00:20:58] understand how you’re doing it is micro dot one it’s a dollar a month like that’s amazing and i
[00:21:06] want to call this out because you have three plans micro dot one micro dot blog and micro
[00:21:10] dot blog premium it’s a buck five bucks or ten bucks we’re literally talking about less than a
[00:21:15] year and you know how when you have like your three plans and the thing you want is always on
[00:21:20] premium well micro dot one literally host your own domain name photo hosting podcast hosting
[00:21:28] how are you how is that possible how are you going to make money on that how can you even do the
[00:21:32] domain name for a dollar a month yeah well so the domain name will host the domain for you but you
[00:21:36] do the registration fee is separate okay that makes me feel better yeah because that would be
[00:21:41] i don’t want you to lose money i’m just like what’s going on yeah it’s so it’s a new
[00:21:45] we just launched it a week ago i don’t 100 know to be honest with you how it’s going to play out
[00:21:52] and i joke with people that like i had to sort of secretly build and launch this because i know
[00:21:57] people would talk me out of doing it but i love these simple prices like i love the micro dot
[00:22:04] blog the standard plan is five dollars a month it’s always been five dollars a month it will
[00:22:07] always be five dollars a month probably like everybody else increases their prices or uses
[00:22:12] like trick pricing or gimmicky like yeah this is the most popular thing i’ve ever seen and i’m like
[00:22:15] plant of the three i love just like simple it’s five dollars you know it most people
[00:22:23] i can’t say most people there are a lot of people in the world in the world that can’t afford five
[00:22:28] dollars a month as an extra cost but a lot of people it’s a no-brainer people that are going
[00:22:32] getting their coffee like you said six dollars so i mean for people in the global south a dollar a
[00:22:38] month could be a very reasonable thing but five dollars a month is still like 60 bucks a year
[00:22:42] yeah exactly and so hopefully the dollar a month will really be able to
[00:22:45] reach more people that was the idea is like can we reach more people for like getting back to
[00:22:49] friction and like making it easier to sign up a dollar is still friction for some people some
[00:22:55] people just will not pay anything and that’s fine i mean you need a credit card that’s you need a
[00:23:00] credit card you do need a credit card and that and a lot of that uh the making people put a
[00:23:05] credit card in to be honest a lot of it’s just like i don’t want spammers using it like we’ve
[00:23:10] been burned with people just like signing up free accounts and yeah and i think that’s only
[00:23:14] worse like
[00:23:15] just ai generated slop everywhere on the internet so um you have to put a credit card in for one
[00:23:21] dollar there’s not even a trial you just you pay a dollar if you think it’s worth it if you don’t
[00:23:26] you move on and there’s other free options out there like tumblr or just keep posting wherever
[00:23:31] you’re posting so it’s a little bit of experiment we do include a whole bunch um but so far it’s
[00:23:37] working like i i feel like we are reaching more people people are excited about it and it’s just
[00:23:45] yeah it’s i try to make it as simple as possible and it includes so many things like there it
[00:23:51] includes things that like you’ll find on like a 25 a month yeah you know hosting yeah yeah photo
[00:23:57] hosting podcast and then and if you upgrade for five dollars a month you get automatic cross
[00:24:01] posting right to threads and blue sky and other services so and no limit to like a lot of places
[00:24:06] are like you can only cross post to three places but unless you pay more and no there’s no limit
[00:24:11] as many places as you want now from a technical perspective as a
[00:24:15] dev myself like you started in jekyll years and years ago but are you still on hugo now it’s just
[00:24:20] on hugo now yeah we moved to from jekyll to hugo i really like hugo and i think at this point
[00:24:26] we are so tied into it with custom themes and plugins we’ll probably just stick with it forever
[00:24:32] i i in theory we could support multiple blogging engines and we are we do support multiple hugo
[00:24:39] versions so like we’ll default to one that we know is compatible with like all the built-in
[00:24:44] themes but you if you
[00:24:45] want to kind of be in the wild west and you know use a more recent version of hugo uh go for it and
[00:24:52] a lot of people hopefully won’t even think about this but it allows a lot of power rather than
[00:24:57] inventing our own like template language like the fact that you could take a hugo blog and like a
[00:25:04] theme and import it into micro.blog essentially it’s not like an import button but like you could
[00:25:09] copy it and tweak the themes so that they work with your blog there’s a lot of flexibility in
[00:25:14] there like i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i
[00:25:15] i’m confident that like no one will ever say like there’s something they can do because we are like
[00:25:20] behind the scenes we’re powered by that engine and i wanted to call out hugo just because i’m
[00:25:26] personally a fan of like simple whatever your architecture is whoever’s listening to this show
[00:25:31] whatever your website architecture is too complicated like like if you have a blog if
[00:25:36] you wrote your own blog and you hit you know you http get to an article and that involves opening
[00:25:41] up a database connection or hitting something or for looping over anything that’s too much
[00:25:45] a static site generator like it harkens back to a simpler time because it was not only was it a
[00:25:50] simpler time it’s just not freaking necessary to open it like i’m so shocked when you hit like
[00:25:55] database not there like when you hit a wordpress site yeah database why are you hitting a database
[00:26:00] right it’s the same blog post that it was earlier today you know what i mean yeah that was that was
[00:26:07] a big part of the thinking with this is that yeah i mean wordpress it got a bad rap for a while it’s
[00:26:12] actually pretty good now with no i’m not disrespecting wordpress i’m just
[00:26:15] saying from a architecture perspective absolutely from architectural standpoint it’s like why do we
[00:26:19] have to have that extra hit and so in micro dog blog it’s actually architected it with like things
[00:26:25] are split across multiple servers so like the main platform does a lot of things it does the api
[00:26:31] does the interface it does everything but at the end of the day once it runs through the publishing
[00:26:36] platform it’s it is it really just copies static html files that are served completely separate
[00:26:43] from the platform so for example if we have an
[00:26:45] outage or something your blog is probably going to stay online it’s still going to be super fast
[00:26:49] so there are there are kind of clever things we’ve done to link those systems together but it really
[00:26:56] is static files and i i really like that yeah it is it is it is one thing to have an outage across
[00:27:02] like something running in kubernetes across multiple servers but it’s like it’s html files
[00:27:06] on a on a disk uh you know what i mean right nginx in front of it there’s not a lot of things that
[00:27:12] can go wrong exactly i assume that back to the one dollar at micro dot
[00:27:15] one that allows you to keep things easily priced like you wouldn’t be able to do this if there
[00:27:21] were databases and big giants of things in the in the background yeah no absolutely keep it as
[00:27:26] simple as possible um there is complexity behind the scenes but like yeah that serving of static
[00:27:31] files is pretty simple and it hasn’t really changed since the beginning of the the web in
[00:27:36] some ways and uh also i think it will help us scale the only thing i worry about really with
[00:27:42] the pricing is like photo storage that sort of thing and i think it’s going to help us scale
[00:27:45] can get costly and so we for example we don’t have a limit on how many photos you can post
[00:27:52] right so there’s abuse potential there there could be like the you know i think somewhere
[00:27:56] in our terms of service it’s basically like as long as you don’t use it as like your own
[00:28:00] like photo backup system like as long as you’re using it for its intended purpose yeah it’s
[00:28:06] flicker it’s not google photos exactly exactly um so there’s potential for abuse there is
[00:28:12] potential that maybe someone paying a dollar were actually using it for their own purpose
[00:28:15] and they’re actually not making any money off of that but like i said it’s a bit of an experiment
[00:28:20] and so far i really love the reaction to it i really like the transparency of it as well like
[00:28:25] on my account page here there’s a very specific call out on do you want us to use ai or not and
[00:28:32] you explain in like simple language like we will use our own services our own servers our local
[00:28:37] models or open ai we will not train your data we will not use your data and you simply you don’t
[00:28:41] want to use it you turn it off yeah and it’s just for like summarizing photos and doing
[00:28:45] podcast transcripts you know yeah and i i love the ai feature like it’s so i love just being able
[00:28:52] to post a photo and it can like auto generate keywords that i can search or like um it’ll help
[00:28:57] me with like a accessibility text all text you know like it’ll just it’ll put something in there
[00:29:02] and then i can copy it and edit it but some people just they are very worried about ai and that’s
[00:29:08] yeah they just want a way to just opt out completely and so we have that checkbox you opt
[00:29:13] out and
[00:29:15] no ai will touch your content at all and having that global checkbox was actually really nice
[00:29:21] because i think it it enables us in the future to do more ai without worrying that every single
[00:29:27] time we launch an ai feature people there’s some people that are going to push back and say you
[00:29:33] know what about the energy use or the environmental costs or this and that and i i think the checkbox
[00:29:39] gives us an answer which is just like you know we hear your concerns you can just completely opt out
[00:29:45] right
[00:29:45] but for people who want it it’s really just a useful tool yeah and if and if it were me i would
[00:29:51] probably say uh use local ai versus use uh open ai like maybe i maybe i don’t mind it if micro.blog
[00:29:58] does it locally with a open model on your own servers but i don’t want it going out of the
[00:30:03] building yeah that’s fair yeah that’s my opinion last question so you sign up i’m here at micro.blog
[00:30:10] slash account what’s the thing that i should do first because i went directly to edit source
[00:30:15] and cross posting and i’m like ah i’m a completionist add medium add mastodon add linkedin
[00:30:21] add flicker like what’s the best way for me to get the most experience if i sign up for this i don’t
[00:30:26] know what i should do to like incorporate micro.blog into my lifestyle great question uh i
[00:30:33] i guess if you’re super plugged into other platforms that may be a good place to start
[00:30:39] is to enable the some of those services may not all of them but yeah you enable a few so that
[00:30:45] i think i would say also if you have uh existing content that you’re not happy with where it is
[00:30:53] import it um so we support import from like wordpress and ghost and all sorts of random
[00:30:59] things um and i i like that that that gives people a way to move their content and of course there’s
[00:31:06] export in different formats too they can get their content out if they want to move away
[00:31:09] but that those two things i think are good places to start like figuring out what data you want
[00:31:15] to come in like is this a replacement for an existing blog or is this just like a new
[00:31:20] micro blog that maybe maybe you set up like a sub domain for um that it’s like in in addition to
[00:31:27] some of the other things that you have on the web um the how would start with those two things
[00:31:33] domain name yeah like thinking about like do you want a domain name for this or do you want just
[00:31:37] to just kind of stick with the defaults it’s a great question i’m not totally sure
[00:31:43] like it depends a lot i feel like i’m asking for like
[00:31:45] onboarding from an expert you know yeah you could go and do a whole onboarding thing
[00:31:49] but i could see pointing non-technical parent to this and it’s like what’s the next thing you
[00:31:53] should do to get the most out of it like are you a just looking for a place to yap or are you be
[00:31:59] a social walled garden expert and you want to and you want to aggregate all this stuff you know
[00:32:05] do you want to do posse because this could be the place for you and then the last thing i want to
[00:32:10] call out which is a compliment but also specific to my audience is that you can export this to
[00:32:15] github you always have control of your you could connect this to github and export an archive of
[00:32:20] your stuff and i just want to give you kudos for that because you know i’m i’m as i explore micro
[00:32:26] dot blog i’ve never felt like i’m trapped or stuck here which i think is also a really cool
[00:32:30] design style thank you i i appreciate that yeah that’s a big part i mean we’d be hypocrites if
[00:32:36] we said you know we believed in the open web and moving content around but like we good luck
[00:32:42] getting your content out so um i i like that too
[00:32:45] there’s a couple things related to that that we’ve done that i like like one there’s a checkbox for
[00:32:50] every time you post your blog we ping the internet archive to make a copy of the blog post i like
[00:32:55] that as a way to have an automatic sort of poor man’s backup way and then also that github
[00:33:02] mirroring we’ve tweaked it a few times and i think it’ll still evolve right now it’s like
[00:33:08] about once a week it basically takes all your posts and photos and copies them to a github
[00:33:14] repository and i think it’ll still evolve right now it’s like it about once a week it basically takes all your posts and photos and copies them to a github repository and
[00:33:15] there’s i don’t know there’s overhead on that so i think we’ll continue to tweak that
[00:33:19] but we also have like normal export and also export that includes photos like that’s one
[00:33:25] thing that has bugged me about some blogging platforms is like all right here’s all your text
[00:33:28] but like how do you get those photos out like those are actually a big part of everything so
[00:33:35] yeah there’s more to do but you got to be able to get your content out otherwise people won’t
[00:33:40] believe that it’s a safe place for their stuff yeah well i want to give a plug to the
[00:33:45] blog to a blog post i wrote in a way of giving a plug to your stuff uh in 2012 i wrote a blog
[00:33:51] post called your words are wasted and i talked about how we’re throwing our keystrokes into
[00:33:57] walled gardens uh and this is 13 14 years ago it was true then it was true in the year 2000 when i
[00:34:03] started the blog uh your blog is the engine of community and that’s where it needs to start so
[00:34:09] if you’re listening and you’re thinking you know i need to make a blog but i don’t know where to
[00:34:13] start there’s 40 different ways to do it
[00:34:15] micro.one this is not a sponsored ad it is an absolutely delightful completely affordable
[00:34:22] place for you to have blogging with your own domain name and then post it and connect it to
[00:34:27] the larger internet uh so i i love that you’re making the web weird again uh and it was great
[00:34:33] to have you chat with me today thank you so much for the shout out i really appreciate talking
[00:34:38] through this and uh yeah it’s it’s an exciting time for the web right now i think this is how
[00:34:44] people uh are really thinking about it and i’m really excited to be able to talk to you today
[00:34:45] about where they should put their stuff whether it’s on micro.blog or somewhere else like there’s
[00:34:49] so many options now put it somewhere post the draft if you have a draft post that draft
[00:34:53] yep yeah and don’t overthink it like it’s okay to just throw something out on the web and kind
[00:34:59] of see what sticks and see where you want to go like i i go back to my first my first blog post
[00:35:04] you know 20 plus years ago my first blog post was something like you know there are already
[00:35:09] too many blogs but i guess i’ll create you know one now and of course it was like so long ago
[00:35:14] they’re way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way
[00:35:15] more blogs now and uh i think some people think like uh what what do i have to say what do what
[00:35:21] like what do i have to share that is interesting but everybody has a story everybody has something
[00:35:25] very cool well thanks so much for chatting with me thanks so much this has been another
[00:35:31] episode of handsome minutes and we’ll see you again next week
[00:35:45] you