Thoughts on micro.blog

Hi @manton,

One of my frustrations with micro.blog is the lack of post summary cards. Most of my posts contain my photography none of which can be found on micro.blog. All the posts from my self-hosted WordPress website appear as title + link.

It would be great if micro.blog could pull in the featured image from my posts along with the excerpt and some way of tagging post so that they can appear in the discover photos stream.

I’ve been with micro.blog since launch. But my content is mostly ignored on micro.blog. Perhaps my content sucks. But I think it’s mostly because it’s very hard for “birds of a feather” to be found on micro.blog. The Discover page is utterly useless to me. It’s basically random posts with no filter. Something more like Automattic’s Reader would improve the experience for me. I would be able to find and follow much easier.

Yeah, I’m tooting my own horn a little bit. I want to show off my photography. I am quite shallow and enjoy likes. One of my previous blog posts featured images like the one in this blog posts. The image was syndicated to Instagram and Twitter and of course, showed up in the WordPress.com Reader. The post received commentary from Instagram (via Brid.gy), WordPress.com viewers, and one from micro.blog. But comments from micro.blog viewers are rare. I’m invisible.

But I want the content to originate on my website. I want to post to micro.blog and a way to have the comments from there appear back on my website. I’m not sure of this but I don’t think manually posting a link to micro.blog allows for this.

It would be great if you could work on these things. It would help make me feel more at home on micro.blog. Currently, it feels like a silo for web developers. Where are the photography geeks and how do I find them? Where are the Formula 1 racing fans and how do I find them?

@klandwehr asked @Burk to create F1 emoji’s to add to the discover list. That helps, but how would a new micro.blog subscriber know to as Burk to do this? How would they find people with similar interests? My 51-year-old eyes can barely see the emoji. Where are the text hashtags?

Perhaps Ben Weirdmuller has a point. In this post, Ben writes of leaving the silos behind completely.

I think it might be more effective to move all the value away: publish on your own site, and use independent readers like Woodwind or Newsblur to consume content. Forget using social networks as the conduit. Let’s go full indie.

I control my blog entirely — from the OS layer to the application layer. Manton, you control micro.blog. It’s your platform.

I doubt few on micro.blog will see this post but just in case, I want to be clear. I am not attacking micro.blog. I want it to succeed. I am just pointing out what I think are some rough edges that need work. I have no interesting in working around those rough edges. I have no interest in moving my WordPress website to the micro.blog platform.

Author: Khürt Williams

A human who works in information security and enjoys photography, Formula 1 and craft ale. #nobridge

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