Archives
I Am Using Micro Blog and Blot.IM To Replace Corporately Owned ‘Social’ Spaces. You Should Too.
This Started As An EMail, in response to a question posed by Doc Searls on the ‘Project VRM mail list’ … and as I finished it - I realized that it actually made for a reasonable post.
So writing this in IAWriter, using markdown and will save it into dropbox, so that it will post to Blot.IM and get routed to Micro.Blog.
Doc wrote :
I’m in conversations about migrating from Google + to something that isn’t yet another platform that one controlling company can shut down.
Mentioned in these conversations are Solid, Mastodon, Ello and Diaspora.
I’m thinking the answers have to be based on standard protocols and file formats. I’m also thinking that the only list of “friends” that fully matters is one’s own contacts list, which in most cases is stored in in a common file format, and therefore portable.
Thoughts?
My Reply
micro.blog : $5 per month - from a cool cat : Manton Reece - Austin based
and
blot.im : $20 a year - from another cool cat - David Merfield - NYC based.
Although blot.im doesn’t (easily) support social interaction - like micro.blog does - it is a really easy place to bring all of your current content - as indeed is micro.blog
Both preach indie web - something lead by Aaron Parecki - who attended IIW this past week.
Web mentions in both worlds are supported.
Anything i post to blot appears in my micro blog stream.
Anything I post to micro blog is routed to twitter, mastodon, linkedin and facebook pages (since Zuck decided to stop the FB API posting to personal walls).
Anything I write on one of my three wordpress blogs is automatically channeled into my micro blog stream.
If you want to channel into - or cross post out from - most places - there is a way to do it and micro blog supported.
I am currently working through all my social spaces and moving content out of those corporate platforms and into one of these two spaces. Google, Flickr (though my library ain’t your library Doc), DayONE, Instagram you name it ….. One day … maybe Twitter - but really my many accounts there just sit there for posterity. Why clutter up important spaces.
Even Dave Winer’s 1999 moves seamlessly over. (At one time I had a very large 1999 stream - all that already sits in my micro blog stream).
CSS. HTML and Templates all customizable
All content can be ported elsewhere whenever you wish.
If you want to see what I have done :
My micro blog is here and My blot site is here
Although Micro blog is Mac centric, others are building Android and Windows apps.
Blot is OS agnostic - but requires dropbox or git for file storage.
Enjoy.