Simon Woods

What tools are missing? I think it helps to talk about specific feature requests here. The current design is around muting, reporting, and curation of the various sections of Discover.

In reply to Manton’s comment:

Similiar to Smokey, there are worries about manual curation in the future but that’s not a thing I think is worth caring about too much for the rest of us right now since it’s mostly theoretical and has too many potential solutions for which it is impossible to know what will definitely be the best approach to take.

Immediately, I think about how Twitter has:

• Quality filter. When I switched this on it made my timeline so much better. Is the Micro.blog version of this the aforementioned Safe Replies? If so, I have missed the detail on that but even so would suggest that gets promoted a lot more.
• Keyword filters. Given the chance, you can really go deep with this and stay ahead of some of the worst offenders; people for whom dealing with is a struggle for even a team of community managers, not least because they are often part of a team themselves (4chan, etc).
• Private mode. You can switch this on if things are getting bad, you need to take a break from using the platform, you are unable to keep an eye on things, or you want a personal timeline as well as a public timeline.
• Per-person re-tweet setting. I know re-posting doesn’t exist on Micro.blog but right now people are already posting to the timeline with a variety of posts, they just happen to be manually created and not actually built into Micro.blog itself. But I can’t filter those out.
• Blocking. When signed into my timeline certain people simply don’t exist.

Now, I’m pretty sure a bunch of that list is either already sorted – for example, muting vs blocking is largely semantics and technical differences – or simply not needed due to the structural differences between Micro.blog and Twitter.

If so then I guess the main issue is exactly that I don’t know that the tools are in fact not missing and other than reading through Help have no way to know; don’t get me wrong, I am happy to see people promote Micro.blog independently (I mean, duh, of course I do right?) but my feeling wth moderation is that it should be almost too obvious these problems are already solved/impossible to encounter; to be perhaps as clear as I should have been all along: Micro.blog should be yelling about this, as it is a signal to many potential power users that the platform is ready for them right now.

I have been taking notes for this wishlist for some time. Two things have stopped me from writing it up and posting:

1. Time and energy. I have spent more of it on making other things, being a believer in the idea that the best position from which to criticise is that of creation, or put another way: I feel much more comfortable writing a critique-based wishlist for Micro.blog now that I’ve significantly increased my exposure to working on different projects.
2. Frankly, Manton, Jean, and John have all worked their arses off to improve Micro.blog in a variety of ways. Not only have I been able to remove items from the list but I have also been exposed to ideas for Micro.blog I had not previously come near to thinking about.

Now here I am, not only more convinced of just how right the entire idea of Micro.blog truly is – after all, it’s not just about Micro.blog but the potential in ideas similar to the platform insofar as sharing the same ideals – but also newly motivated to attempt to make a constructive contribution. As such, here is the list:

(Note: I have published three posts around this subject, all of which play a part in the list. Links: Quick list; Needs; Thoughts)

• Comprehensive support of features centred around accessibility;
  • Easier alt tags, VoiceOver support, and a robust editor are some of the necessary pieces to making Micro.blog as accessible as possible.
  • Some improvements were recently made on iOS.
• Thorough user moderation;
  • The ability to control as much of your timeline as possible is essential to making Micro.blog a viable space in which people can comfortably invest their time and energy.
  • Earlier this year the web and Mac apps gained muting and reporting tools.
• Multi-account support on the web.
• Keyboard shortcuts;
  • ctrl+enter to post, etc. The lack of these options on the web is jarring, especially in a post editor.
• Mentions;
  • When replying in a thread, you ought to be given the option to reply-all or not.
  • Autofill when typing a username.
  • Autofill has come to iOS, when creating new posts.
• Editing replies;
  • Even if there was a limit applied via time and/or length.
• Conversations;
  • Some form of threaded replies is needed.
  • Links to replies go to the actual reply.
• Better responsive design;
  • On the web it should be possible to make the browser window smaller without cutting off parts of the site.
• Dark mode.
• humans.txt;
  • An option to set this as a special page aligns perfectly with the web-centred philosophy around which Micro.blog was built.
• IndieWeb support;
  • Like
  • Repost
  • Selected entry (for quoting)
  • Emoji link share – this is available in Omnibear, as a custom alternative to Like.
  • IndieWeb support has improved greatly throughout the year.
• Feedback;
  • When taking an action there should be better, more obvious feedback from the site.
  • For example; taking you to your reply once it has been posted.
  • This has improved throughout the year.
• Cross-posting per post;
  • A version of this exists on iOS.
• Hosted;
  • Theme editing – some way to connect owner of blog to theme controls when they are browsing the site.
  • Improve performance of saving changes to pages, posts, and the theme.
  • Drafts – the ‘Preview’ feature is good but the ability to temporarily save posts would be fantastic.
  • Greater variety of payment plans.
  • Either an expanded trial or limited posting ability for free accounts.
  • A free test blog on which you can preview changes to pages and themes, and send out posts but they never make it to the timeline.
  • Discounted bulk blog subscriptions. (I am unashamedly biased towards this, heh.)
• Help;
  • Add search. This has been mitigated by the recently improved homepage but over time a search box will become necessary for most people.
  • Further additions from other sources – ex: this ‘pins’ post from Manton – which has already happened a little.
  • Make sure the breadth of blog-centred web is covered.
  • For example: self-hosted WordPress, hosted WP, multisite WP, shared hosting WP.
  • WP has the potential to lack compatibility due to different hosts implementing their own version for whatever reason.
  • Micro.blog should, even if gradually, cover more and more of this ground until everything is up-to-date and quickly updated whenever different versions of WP are updated.
• Broadly;
  • Where possible, all of these updates should be available to third-party apps.
  • The web MUST be the canonical version. App-centric approaches are in direct opposition to any substantial support of the open web, especially when they are Apple-only efforts, mostly due to the cost barrier.
  • This year has seen a lot of improvements to the web app, which is great! Long may it continue.
  • Example of Apple-centric approach: the Micro.blog home page for logged-out visitors has a screenshot of the Mac App.

There might be things I’m missing but there is one glaring omission; Android. I have mentioned the Apple-heavy support of Micro.blog but not listed Android, or any other platform. The reality is an official Android app is all but impossible in the current circumstances, whilst third-party efforts are ongoing but appear to be particularly difficult to implement; this is of course not at all exclusive to Micro.blog but remains a fact even so.

Windows and even Linux support have also been spoken about by developers but for now the web is the answer for those of us outside of Apple’s ecosystem, and I believe some of the items on my list would further soften the blow that is a lack of cross-native app support.

• • •

Micro.blog recently hit the first year of public release and it is fair to say it has come a long way in those 12 months, let alone the progress Manton has made from the earliest days of the Kickstarter project. I for one have found just the right place for my life online, to such an extent that I now begrudgingly use the mainstream silos of the web for work and do everything I can to avoid them in a personal context. For that reason and that reason alone I have spent plenty of my time on the timeline, my hosted site, my new photoblog, and Today I Learned.

And, like Micro.blog itself, I’m just getting started.

What do you think? Do you have your own wishlist? Here are some links for getting involved if you want to do more:

• Contribute to Micro.blog on GitHub
  • the Issues repo includes feature requests
• Join Micro.blog on Slack

The sky is falling on Twitter. Maybe. Probably. Nobody knows for sure but we do know one thing: giants fall, especially on the web.

With that in mind people who at one point or another waved a flag for Twitter and social media in general are beginning to think back to when the web seemed less scattered and fragile, even if it wasn’t actually, and remembering that blogging is a thing! Yes, it still exists, and lots of people do it, and they do it well!

As the shock of that idea settles in your mind and you take a look at Micro.blog let’s also talk about where the platform is lacking, specifically with mainstream social web users in mind – basically, you’re looking to spend less of your time in Twitter, Facebook, whatever, and want to actually replace it with something – and a little about how improvements can be made:

• Cost
  • Paying for a social network platform is considered a non-starter, especially for people who want you to know that. The truth is that Micro.blog is free, however posting is built with blogs in mind – the name says it all! – and blogs need hosting to exist, which in turn costs money to provide.
  • A possible way to improve this is finding a way to offer a free version; perhaps with limitations attached, such as X amount of posts per X amount of time.
  • It is true that you can grab a free blog from WordPress, plug the feed for that into Micro.blog and that will be your posting for free on top of the free features you get with Micro.blog itself. Obviously this is not as streamlined as having all-in with Micro.blog but it is at least an option.
• Moderation
  • The age of mainstream social media has seen the rise of an inevitable fact: people must be given the ability to protect themselves on the web. Whilst there are generally agreed upon ideas centred around account security, it is also crucial for individuals to have control over the availability of their contributions to a platform.
  • Whilst it is true that the open web offers a greater chance of exposure in return for greater freedom, the fact is Micro.blog is not a wild thing in the web but instead a platform owned and run by the people who develop it; this involves manual curation, a process the Micro.blog team have in fact touted in favour of an algorithmic approach and so if anything they have gone out of their way to not make any room for bad excuses should anything go wrong.
  • Saying that, the platform lacks all but a newly released Mute feature that both only works for people and is the only tool available to as many people as possible; the other tool, reporting people, is only available on the Mac app. These limitations are particularly glaring in light of Twitter’s fairly robust user-side toolset, long overdue thought it might have been.
  • The ability to block people, an expansion of the reporting and mute tools, and a continuation of the already established broadcast from the Micro.blog team regarding these issues would all make for significant improvements to the current system. It should also be noted that the Micro.blog team are open to discussions about this and related issues, to the extent that of the two full-time developers one is the community manager.
• Metrics
  • You can get valuable feedback from following counts and the like, whether that’s for personal use or if you’re using social media for work – the lines between personal and work often blur on social media, especially for power users and so they will often make loud calls for the importance of metrics.
  • Micro.blog already has some metric-based implementation within the platform but it is much less obvious and does not follow the broadly accepted design of the closed web platforms.
  • The next step in this process could involve implementing the most in-demand metrics but pair that with an option to switch it off or opt-out for those who are not interested in either side of this data; robust support for anonymity is important not just for usability (having options makes better quality platforms) but also for the integrity of user safety.
• Discovery
  • There is no search, no hashtags, no Trending, no Moments… the values of the establishment have very much failed to land on Micro.blog when it comes to finding people.
  • Micro.blog does come with a Discover timeline, tagmoji (basically, tagging posts using emoji), and a behaviour driven approach called ‘Micro Monday’ which is a well-considered version of Follow Friday and an accompanying podcast by the same name.
  • Whilst search and tagging can be used to manipulate a platform and thus spoil it, as we have plainly seen across lots of social media platforms, an implementation of them with as much care and consideration of the rest of Micro.blog would be a significant improvement for Discovery. Perhaps these features would be only available for Verified users (to verify yourself on Micro.blog involves either a paid account or enough effort for free users as to discourage malicious users).
• Apps
  • On the side of people using Apple products Micro.blog is well served, with a first-party (official) app on both iOS and the Mac; on top of that there are two first-party apps for the photo and podcast side of Micro.blog. Unfortunately people using Android and Windows are left with no first-party support outside of the web.
  • Whilst social media has become an ecosystem of first-party apps, Micro.blog is built on the open web and as such includes a culture of embracing third-party developers. Not only is there an existing third-party client on iOS with enthusiastic backing from the Micro.blog team, there are now also two options on Android also backed by the Micro.blog team.
    • Best of all, the Micro.blog developers make themselves available for helping the third-party developers in a way that is much more flexible and open to fast improvements when compared to the behemoth companies of the closed web.
    • Unfortunately Android continues to be difficult for development, as is the case for most platforms and services, whilst there has been nothing save for vague comments about any sort of Windows app.
  • It is clear app development will continue to be a process dependent on other factors in a bigger way than the other issues, mostly with regard to the need for more people to be on the platform. In the meantime the best way to counter these issues is to make the web the absolute core of Micro.blog; by making the web app the prime version of Micro.blog it makes the platform accessible to as many people as possible as well as providing a robust back-up for times when access via app is difficult.

These appear to be the flagpole issues surrounding the idea of Micro.blog as at least some sort of alternative to Twitter and mainstream social media platforms. It is still entirely true that Micro.blog does not exist to replace these platforms for every single person, nor is it likely to ever be that.

However, the more these issues are tackled the more likely people will find Micro.blog to be a viable alternative for exactly that which many people have already embraced it; a place for thoughtful, considerate posting with space for lots of ideas, discussions, and more than supportive of the quick-post culture that initially pushed Twitter into the mainstream of web culture.