Microblogging and fragmentation

I get routinely annoyed at Twitter for something they do to, or don’t do for, their users. During my annoyance periods, I look around in search of ideas or alternatives. This is how I got into App.net in late 2012. This is how I ended up backing Manton Reece’s Micro.blog project on Kickstarter a few months ago.

The cool idea behind Micro.blog is that, while it looks like a Twitter clone on the surface, it actually goes deeper than that, as each account is an independent microblog. Each user is actually publishing very brief blog posts, from websites that are hosted either on the Micro.blog platform (you pay a small monthly fee to have your hosted [username].micro.blog space), or on spaces users already own (you can integrate your microblog with your current blog or website).

This approach has some advantages. For example, you own your space in a way or another, and you’re not dependent on a centralised infrastructure and on the whims of companies like Twitter or Facebook. You can publish on your blog or microblog first, and then broadcast elsewhere. People can follow you on Micro.blog itself by joining the platform, but if they don’t, they still can subscribe to your RSS feed.

This is an intriguing path I urge you to explore, but I must say that so far I’m struggling to make the most of it and optimise my experience. The main reason is fragmentation. Now, it’s not entirely the platform itself at fault here. My particular workflows and habits as someone who publish posts and follows other people who do so, make it difficult to achieve a seamless experience. But I also think that a new type of RSS reader or application could greatly help smoothen things out.

Fragmentation, I was saying. Let’s have a look at my habits first. I’m currently most active on Twitter, but I’m also a member of two other social networks mainly populated by ex App.net folks: pnut.io and 10Centuries. These two other places have slower-moving timelines than Twitter, but still, after adding yet another timeline (Micro.blog’s), I tried monitoring everything by keeping different windows and client apps open on my Mac, only to find it was all a bit overwhelming. I had to do what I do on iOS: check things on each different network by keeping only one app open at a time, maybe two if I’m taking a break from work.

This is not a problem of Micro.blog in itself, of course; I’m just pointing out the fact that if you don’t want to give up other social spaces, adding yet another one can become cumbersome. Sure, you can crosspost to Twitter and Facebook from Micro.blog but, if I understood correctly, you can’t handle Twitter or Facebook interactions on Micro.blog; you still have to go to Twitter or Facebook to do that. In its current state, Micro.blog is an excellent, robust solution for those who are dissatisfied with Twitter, are leaving it or putting it on the back burner, and at the same time are considering the idea of a single space from where to blog, micro-blog, and be social. (Suggested reading: A Guide to Micro.blog For People Who Have A Love/Hate Relationship With Twitter by Jean MacDonald).

Fragmentation, for me, is an issue also when it comes to writing. At first I had thought about integrating Micro.blog into my main website (this one), but I quickly decided against it. Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I actually like to keep things separated. I like to have a place (this one) where I publish long-form pieces, and another where I broadcast status updates, share photos, links, etc.; for now this other place is mainly Twitter, but even if I got tired, gave up everything and used Micro.blog exclusively, I would still maintain two separate spaces for brief ‘social material’ and for long articles.

Separation and fragmentation tend to form anyway, even if you just stick to blogging and microblogging. The Micro.blog client (or Web interface) is good, but I think it works at its best if you limit yourself to status updates and to the social aspect of Micro.blog. Whereas if you frequently write longer posts and long-form pieces on your main blog, you either:

Keep blog and microblog separated using e.g. MarsEdit for your blog and the Micro.blog client for your tweet-sized updates and for reading other people’s updates.

Keep blog and microblog integrated, and at this point it might be easier to just use MarsEdit to write everything; but to read other people’s updates and interact socially, you’d still need to switch to a different app (Micro.blog app or other client).

Earlier I mentioned that a great feature of microblogging is that you can follow someone’s activity by simply subscribing to their RSS feeds. The problem is that current RSS readers have user interfaces tailored to handle longer posts with titles, mostly. This is because such interfaces all follow the email client paradigm. You have a list of sources on the left, then a list of post/articles you can browse once you’ve selected a source, and then a bigger pane on the right where you usually read the article directly in the RSS reader.

If you follow somebody who mixes short micro-post and longer, traditional blog posts, you’ll easily end up having dozens of unread items, but of course 98% of these will be Twitter-like updates (typically untitled), while the meatier stuff will be the remaining 2%:

And this is for just one source. Imagine following even just 25–30 people. It would become impractical very soon, especially with people who micro-blog as frequently as they tweet. A traditional RSS reader would have an inadequate interface. On the other hand, a microblogging app would need a good overhaul to feature a full-blown set of tools to write long-form posts and not just micro updates.

I still haven’t refined this idea, but for me a more practical Mac RSS reader to follow microbloggers would be an application capable of detecting micro-posts (status updates) and present them in a Twitter-timeline-like manner; while long-form posts and articles would be separated and available to browse and read in the traditional RSS reader view (similar to email clients). Or — even better — an application that looked like a Twitter client at first, but when you click on a post announcing a longer article, a pane would open on the side, where you could read the full article with ease. If you’re only interested in longer articles, a toggle could hide the ‘chaotic’ Twitter-like timeline and present everyone you follow as an RSS source, highlighting only the articles and omitting the status updates.

This is a roughly-sketched mockup of such an application. It’s a sort of Tweetdeck/NetNewsWire hybrid. And yes, the OS X interface looks older because I created this image on my 12-inch PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

I believe microblogging has a future, and Manton Reece is doing a great job with Micro.blog as a platform. There are, however, still different levels of friction involved that might make transitions less smooth; not only because the ideal would be for people to just embrace microblogging and leave proprietary, centralised social networks behind — and that’s not going to happen very soon — but also because microblogging as a platform needs specialised applications (readers, clients) that can handle timelines, short updates, and long-form pieces, ideally in one single place, with a homogeneous UI. And by handling I mean both reading and writing. I’m aware that the era of monolithic applications capable of managing different tasks is at its sunset, but the overall (micro)blogging experience would certainly feel less fragmented.