A few days back I wrote about the IndieWeb and a blogging system called micro.blog.

I’ve been testing micro.blog at the following site: bloftin2.micro.blog for several weeks now. I just enjoy seeing how things work.

So looking at the two. Micro.blog is a small company. It is one developer and three other people. They have a high commitment to keeping their service free of scumbags. I like that. Here’s a list of other things I like about it:

• Free 10 day trial, after which your blog goes away but your retain an account on which you can post and read your timeline.
• The melding of a blogging system with a Twitter-like timeline is clever.
• Removal of some of the traditional social media concepts, like #s and @s, removes some of the main ways people abuse social media. Yes, it also removes a tool for finding like-minded people and interesting things, but let’s face it, that stuff is abused so much by would-be influencers. I don’t think it’s a great loss.
• The blog page have no way to comment. To comment, you must be a member, and you do it from your timeline. Again – a tool for abuse by spammers is removed.
• The iPhone app is very simple. The WordPress app is good too, but with micro.blog being a bit more bare-bones, it is just very very simple. To me, simplicity is the key to getting more people to do something.
• Login via email. That’s right. No damned password to remember.
• Nice, simple themes. It is so hard to find a WordPress theme these days that is just a simple wide space for text and video and a simple sidebar. There’s no sidebar in micro.blog. Just a blog. I love that. It focuses on your writing/video/images.

Now micro.blog isn’t the tool for everything. This blog, for example, kind of functions as my personal web portal. It is my home base.  I run my own installation of WordPress on web hosting account with DreamHost.com. I have done this for many years now.

The biggest issue in using micro.blog is the same thing that plagues anything on the web that isn’t in one of the big social media silos. Visibility. It will be interesting to see how things develop. For now I have it set up to cross post all my stuff to my Twitter account.

I guess my point is that when you are use to seeing all the “likes” and comments when you post something, it is kind of an adjustment using a system where there are no “likes”, no retweets, and to engage with someone you must actually have an account and be part of an actual conversation.

In summary – micro.blog just makes blogging very easy. Whatever system you use, I think that having your own domain name and not having your stuff all on FB or Twitter or IG or Tiktok is the main thing. Own your shit. Don’t give it away.