You can pay $5 a month to get them to host your microblog, but by adopting some web standards like RSS and webmentions, you can host your microblog on your own site. If you’re on WordPress you can publish to your site using the Microblog iOS and Mac apps. Replies are a bit of a bugbear, though: they’re handled entirely within Micro.blog if initiated using the app’s Reply functionality, or threaded in properly if you post from your own site with the proper webmention URL.
As a security architect I often have to create policies, procedures, and guidelines. It can be a challenge to get everything right.
Based on what is written in the micro.blog community guidelines, from my perspective the hosted blogs are not really independent.
E.g.
Blog content hosted by Micro.blog will be subject to the community guidelines below.
The following will not be tolerated in @-replies or in posts (including photos) that appear on Micro.blog.
However, I think the community has perceived that they have 100% control over content post on their hosted micro.blog domain. A consequences of violating the guidelines:
Posting to Micro.blog-hosted sites will be temporarily or permanently disabled.
Based on my understanding of these guidelines, micro.blog is a moderated silo. It's no different from WordPress.com or Tumblr. I don't know whether micro.blog will be a successful alternative to people fleeing Twitter, Facebook, et al. But I feel I've seen this movie before.
My self-hosted WordPress website has been around since 2005. Last year, I started using the IndieWeb plugins. Lot's growing pains. Lots of manual effort in some places. I have since backed off from trying to work around the challenges. I felt like one of those people who spends more time tweaking the engine of the car than actually driving it.
But it's my home stead. I'm not in publishing or marketing but I don't want to build my presence on the web on rental property.
I apologize if this sounds critical but I’ve operated my own domain for 13 years and I have 100% editorial control over my content. Perhaps this is something for Manton to discuss with the community to clarify the intent of the guidelines and endure that community expectations and understanding of those guidelines are aligned.
