> There's a better way: a network of independent microblogs. Short posts like tweets but on your own web site that you control.
Either I don't get it, or their service is not what they advertise. After reading that line, I would expect a somewhat federated blogging platform where you can set up your own server, and it joins the 'network of independent microblogs'. But I can't find any instructions on how to do that?!?
So I am wondering if 'on your own web site' rather means something like you can buy a custom domain for your profile page on that service?
> where you can set up your own server, and it joins the 'network of independent microblogs'
It's a bit like that. You can configure the official Mac or iOS Micro.Blog app to post microposts to your own Wordpress-API compatible website if you want. You can submit the RSS feed from your website to your Micro.Blog account and have that feed into the Micro.Blog timeline - and if you do that, it's actually free to be a member.
It's difficult to explain all that and intimidating to non-programmers (there's a lot of non-technical users on Micro.Blog), so I think they focus on the Micro.Blog hosting & official apps as the easiest way to get started. There's a lot of Micro.Blog users for whom self-hosted-Wordpress/Jekyll is more hassle than they want, and they'd rather pay $5/mth to have that hassle go away.
You might be interested in reading about IndieWeb [1]. Behind the scenes Micro.Blog uses the W3 Micropub [2] specification and other IndieWeb standards for posting microposts and federating Webmentions across websites, if that's something you're interested in.
Okay, that sounds like we need a micropub enabled blog software now :-)
In general, I am a huge fan of this business model (federated + strong commercial players). It just seems that the federated part looks a bit weak at the moment. I think changing that should be a priority for micro.blog as I believe much of the negativity here at HN comes from the not so clear difference from the traditional services.
So far I have found this [1] which doesn't look very mature ('Early alpha'), but hey, it's a start.
>After reading that line, I would expect a somewhat federated blogging platform where you can set up your own server, and it joins the 'network of independent microblogs'.
This is exactly what I was hoping for and now I'm super disappointed.
Yea, I mean if this were a paid service with full ActivityPub and OStatus support (and could interact with Mastodon, Plemore, GNU Social, et. al.) then that would be something different.
But a $5 a month, non-open source, closed, siloed system?
I'd recommend going back to the drawing board and use more off-the-shelf stuff. Create a payment gateway to setup and maintain a Mastodon or Plemore instance, with a backend that automatically sets up the domain and handles software updates.
Yes, there are other services which do this, but there is plenty of room to do it better. Creating a new micro-twitter is pretty much a non-starter at this point.
Either I don't get it, or their service is not what they advertise. After reading that line, I would expect a somewhat federated blogging platform where you can set up your own server, and it joins the 'network of independent microblogs'. But I can't find any instructions on how to do that?!?
So I am wondering if 'on your own web site' rather means something like you can buy a custom domain for your profile page on that service?