feedle

I like Jeff Nichols' piece, but I don't agree that the writer's web is blogging. I think it's bigger. Blogging is part of the writer's web. Today's writing network is much more powerful, the software tools are stronger, and new UI standards have evolved. Things like Digital Ocean, Markdown, Font-Awe...

BTW it's worth calling attention to a bit I linked to yesterday. Cross-posting to Bluesky and Mastodon is not on the roadmap for WordLand. They are too limited in the features they support for writers. This is a big point, not a casual thing. I am trying to create a network that's like stereo to mon...

The very last message in the DG is, now, 25 years later, basically the design of the network I'm building -- with WordLand as the frontend and WordPress as the backend. The issue is the same. When people post only to get attention, forget about anything useful getting done there. It's strictly a bro...

We need a new kind of social network designed to run an effective response to fascism. So far all we have are profit centers for billionaires and wannabe billionaires.

I don't like social networks as they're currently configured. The idea that it's some kind of conversation -- no it really doesn't resemble a conversation. I would like to try a social network that didn't have the concept of replying to a post. Give each other a little more distance. It still would ...

It's our social web. “We started off with a network of writers, and ended up with business models of oligarchs. It's time to start building webs like we mean it and damn all the wannabe-billionaires.”

Jesse Stay who I have known from early blogging days proposes to build the billionaire-proof social network using the AT Protocol. I'm going to help if I can. I'm developing apps that run on AT Proto, so at least I should be able to test my apps with his service.

Another idea that we continued to push in 2024 is textcasting. It was what I needed to build WordLand, it defines its objective, to form an open social web with all the basic features writers need. Titles, links, simple styling, ability to edit, no character limit, these are basic features we will d...

Talking with a friend about the listening lists idea and realized if it takes off it will turn podcasting into its own loosely-coupled social network. Really low tech, like the web. And not possible for one company to control. All it will take is one popular podcast client to get the pump primed. Th...

A piece in today's NYT said all networks flame out, but that's actually too crude a statement. If you want your network not to flame out, give the users the tools to keep things moderated. One of the best features of Facebook is it gives the author of a post the power to decide who can respond to th...

Analogously, Trump is Kennedy and Biden/Harris is Nixon. And the social web is 2024, what TV was in 1960. Trump has mastered the new medium. To a large extent, he created the new medium, and the resulting network formed around him. So when Carville says he wants to figure out how to communicate the ...

If such a network existed, we would be nominating our own Cabinet members, the shadow Cabinet. Let the journalists compare the qualifications of our candidates vs the incumbent party's. Create news. That's what the Dems absolutely suck at. They very quietly pass legislation that the other party (whi...

What matters with social networks is what you can get done there, not so much the features of the network. Bluesky has the same features today it had a month ago. The difference is we had an election in the US, I guess that was the catalyst. The presence of Elon Musk so close to Trump says there is ...

BTW, start thinking of WordPress as a highly networked, deployed, debugged, widely supported network operating system. It meets all the criteria. It also has storage. And can publish. And unlike other social web systems, it is textcasting-ready since it comes from the world of blogging where we comp...

There isn’t a single social web network that I like pouring my creativity into. I feel like I’m being used not appreciated. There’s nothing in it for me. I had a similar feeling for Twitter, but they were the only one. Now there are a bunch, and I honestly don't care about any of them, esp now that ...

Whenever you ask for something with Bluesky they tell you about how a user account is like a website, you just have to make it work a certain way, that some devs have mastered, and I guess I could too, but right now all my attention is focused on WordPress and getting it to work well with ActivityPu...

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that what's missing in the two-party system in the US is that one of the parties does not own a social network. It is not represented online 7-by-24-by-12 every year, not just presidential election years. Democrats, when you lose it's because you didn't show up...

Threads just added an online status feature, where it'll show your icon to others with a green dot if you're online. I turned it off. I don't see this as a social network, I see it as a two-way publishing medium. Big fundamental difference. My words speak for me here and on Threads. It's a strong ar...

Interesting thread on a simple upgrade for any podcasting client that would create a network of tools people could use for subscribing and listening. I've tried to get people who make podcast clients to listen. Yes I am a user, but I also designed the technology, and did the first implementations, s...

Elon Musk bought the biggest airport on the social web. A major world hub like Atlanta, London or Dubai. Bluesky is a regional airport in a cool place, maybe Austin. Mastodon is a small network of airports, like the ones served by Ryanair in Europe. Threads is potentially one of the big airports lik...

A lot of people are thinking that Threads is the new "nice" version of The Original Twitter, but folks, that's pure bullshit -- remember who owns Threads and ask yourself if you want that dude to be in charge of our political organizing network. We need something better.

BTW, I'm intermittently locked out of my Threads account. They say it has to do with automated stuff they don't explain. I don't have any apps that do anything with Instagram or Threads. I tried changing the password. Anyway, I was just starting to like the network, it has its own feel, and have mad...

This is my ideal for the size of a social network. I have actually had networks this size in the past. When it clicks, it's really great.

I've written a crawler for the network of blogrolls via connective links in HTML and/or RSS feeds. When I started the project, I had no idea what I'd find. How many blogrolls of what quality. I still don't know the extent of it, but there's a non-trivial number of blogrolls out there. I'm thinking a...

The "largest open publishing network in the world" is the web. Ghost says it's ActivityPub. Think bigger.

One thing Twitter is good for — getting support from your cable ISP. Spectrum’s other ways of providing support are designed to get you to give up without using too much of their employees' time. On Twitter, they pretty much always stay with it to resolution. And on Twitter, they have real people wh...

Four things. We're selling ourselves out by letting Facebook own a new social network and not putting that energy into building something that preserves our choice. I understand that Facebook's claims of supporting the Fedisphere won't amount to anything. They will end up controlling what interop me...

The CEOs of Mastodon, Bluesky, Automattic and Ghost are all in my (real soon now) blogroll because their systems all support feeds. There's something new afoot. An open social network that "just works" across platforms because of simple easy well-established standards.

A blogroll is a piece of an open, super low-tech, small pieces loosely joined, social network. And will help us bootstrap textcasting. OPML still has a lot to give.

I asked ChatGPT to draw a "social network for writers." ❤️

Yesterday I sent a message to people who follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, asking which networks people check first, which they get the most out of. As you might expect, the most common answer was the network I was asking on (except Facebook, no one answered there, I guesse...

I asked ChatGPT to draw a picture of a social network for writers. GPT rendering of "social network for writers."

A discussion about whether a feed reader should support titleless items. It should, without question. The spec is very clear. "All elements of an item are optional, however at least one of title or description must be present." It's how social media sites like Bluesky, Mastodon, et al hook up to the...

At the end of another year, network writing is still broken and the bigger problem is we don't work together. And we've gotten out of the habit of trying out new ideas with our networks. And we're building systems that depend on the kindness of our peers and big companies, and keep learning that thi...

You can live in places where people do awful disgusting things, I know, I've lived in Berkeley and NYC. Twitter is so huge, this idea that it could disband just like that, well it isn't happening. Maybe it's time for us to say clearly what we expect of a social network and try to influence how they ...

I heard ActivityPub described as two-way RSS. If so, there are imho more direct ways to arrive at that. I think it's possible to create a federation system that takes a few days to implement. Maybe it doesn't need all the features they've put into ActivityPub. I'm pretty sure a lightweight social ne...

People who say Twitter is over aren't considering how vast it is. Same kind of situation as with Atom many years ago. It wasn't obvious how deeply installed RSS was, all the networks that had been created with it. It was basically impossible at that time to displace RSS. Anyway, same thing with Twit...

Colin Walker wonders if he should try Bluesky. I say yes. At first I was pretty negative, after the implosion of Twitter, here was another Jack Dorsey network. I wasn't in the mood. But eventually I tried it, and I liked it very much. The mood is civil and often artistic. There are some very creativ...

If you want to see the manifesto of FeedLand, the goal we're aiming this product at, just read the Textcasting doc. That's what it's all about. I needed to focus our work on this project, and I had learned from many years of trying to peer with social networks, only to give up in 2017, that what's n...

Nobody thinks of social media apps like Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, etc as part of a content management system. But if they are somewhat textcasting oriented, and have feeds that are properly configured, then yes -- you can have people write for publication using such a well-equipped social network.

I have an itch to make a simple chat program for a workgroup whose only output is a simple RSS 2.0 feed. Uses Markdown and supports all the features of Textcasting design. Open source of course. Something people can test their apps against. A model for the kind of feed I'd like to see every social n...

BTW, if you want to break up Google, start by making Chrome an independent company that is not allowed to work with Google. They are controlling the the open internet, the same way they controlled RSS, turning our open network into a corporate asset. It'll have the same disastrous end.

When I write about EZ-Pass for News I often hear from entrepreneurs who have either tried the idea or want to try it. This is what I have learned and what I believe. No matter how enticing you make it the news industry will fight you. It's possible a new network has to be formed, which is far beyond...

Yet another time Google pulled the rug out from under bloggers, acting as the defacto owner of the web. To big tech companies we just don't exist, probably because to news orgs we don't exist either. Not being able to tell where your stuff is being discussed means you can't learn or persuade. Maybe ...

Bluesky is an invite-only network, but it has an API, and we've added RSS feeds, so I can present to you a view onto Andrew Hickey's Bluesky feed, accessible to everyone.

What a huge loss for the human species that a monstrous company like Facebook controls a wonderful social network like Facebook.

August 27: "Standards that move based on the will of big companies never move compatibly. The interop we have with the web wasn't created by Googles or Mozillas or the EFF. The web was created by accident, when the tech industry of the early 1990s wasn't looking. And of course they've been trying ev...

I'm back from my auto adventure to Cape Cod and back in my Tesla Model Y. It's the longest trip I've taken in the Tesla, and this time, unlike my trips to NYC, I had to use the Supercharger network. I am too exhausted to write up the experience, but I learned a lot, and for the first time I let the ...