Tag: socials

Start with part 1 (activities), then part 2 (interaction). Sorry this 3rd part took a little longer than intended to come out.

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, I covered some types of activities (reading, writing, responding, sharing) that come into play in the text-driven social web, as well as the different flavours of interaction that make up our online relations (more or less synchronous, and related to that, contribution length in those exchanges).

What this is all about is figuring out how blogging can learn from what made “The Socials” (which became the big capitalist social networks we all know) so successful, to the point that many die-hard bloggers (myself included) got sucked up in the socials and either completely abandoned their blog, or left it on life-support. I believe that understanding this can help us draft a vision for how things in the “open social web” (I’ll keep calling it that for the time being) can work, now or in the near future, to give us the best of both blogging and the socials, without requiring that we sell our souls or leave our content hostage to big corporations.

So today is part 3, which I’ve called “Integration” (initially tried “Friction”, a key part of the story), which is about bringing all of this together.

Part 1 already kicks off this idea: what the socials do really well is remove friction, in particular by bringing in the same interface writing/posting, commenting, reading. They do it really well, but inside their walled garden. If we try and start with blogging as the centre, what would it look like? Let’s try.

Start with reading

First of all: reading and following. RSS works, and we still have RSS readers despite Google almost making the ecosystem go extinct when it killed Google Reader. What we need is two things:

1. make it super easy to subscribe to a blog, wherever I stumble upon it – as easy as following somebody on the socials – and make it visible
2. from my “reading interface” (ie, the RSS reader), make it super easy to comment, share, react or link to a publication and start writing something new

Frictionless subscribe is well on the way, as far as I can see: I recently installed NetNewsWire, and since then, I can “share” any site I have open in my browser to the app (on my computer or my phone) and it will look for the feed and add it to my subscription list. The desktop and phone apps sync through iCloud. That works for me. It’s easy enough. I see a blog I like, I click twice and confirm, we’re good.

FeedLand makes it super easy to subscribe inside its own ecosystem (just tick a checkbox next to a feed you see in somebody else’s subscriptions), and has a bookmarklet, but it’s not as seamless. For example, after using the bookmarklet, I’m not “back on the page I was reading”, I’m inside FeedLand. I’m sure this kind of thing can be fixed. This is just to illustrate the kind of thing we need: some integrated way, ideally through the “share” menu (assuming it also exists in non-mac environments?), to “stupid-subscribe” to an RSS feed.

What FeedLand does that is great is make the subscriptions public, just like the people I’m following or connected to on the socials are visible to others. I can even embed them in my blog to use as a blogroll.

So, let’s say the subscription problem is pretty much solved, or nearly so. The second one is much, much trickier, and I think it’s the key to everything. (At least, one of the keys.)

In my “reading interface”, be it NetNewsWire or my FeedLand river (the “newsfeed”), I’m seeing the blog posts I’ve subscribed to. Let’s assume for now that how they are displayed is a question of user/tool preference and something we know how to do. For example, do I want to see the posts “mailbox-style” (with headers that I click on to display the post), or “newsfeed-style” (like a facebook newsfeed, with more or less long excerpts)?

Add reacting

Let’s concentrate on the next step: reacting, commenting, sharing. Can I do that easily? The screenshots above show that there is some intention in the right direction, but not enough. The desktop app gives me a share icon. FeedLand allows me to reshare inside FeedLand. I can star/like, but it remains local to the “reader software”.

This is where we need more. When I read a post I’m subscribed to, it should be trivial to:

• “like” it, if the tool producing the post supports it
• “comment” upon it, if the tool producing the post supports it
• “share” to a tool of my choice, be it the socials, a bookmarking service, or my blog – with or without extra content on my part (I could write a whole blog post with a reference to the link in it, or I could just post the naked link to Bluesky if I wanted to)

While we are at it, I should also be able to see if there are comments visible to me, as well as likes/shares.

All this should be possible without leaving the reading interface.

Of course, this requires a slight mindset change for us bloggers: it shouldn’t matter so much if people read our post on our website or through the feed. In that respect, the feed should contain a complete version of the blog post: untruncated, with links and media. (I don’t know why I keep stumbling upon blog feeds with the links stripped out, by the way, it’s super annoying!)

So, I write a blog post with my blogging software of choice. This blog post can be liked, commented upon, or linked to (shared). I can choose whether likes and comments are active or not. This blog post is published to my blog, and in the RSS feed. In some cases, it also goes out by e-mail (not to be forgotten). Whether people read the blog post on the blog, in the feed reader, or in their e-mail, they can easily “interact” with it, where they are (less true with e-mail, so let’s leave it aside, but not forget it’s there). As the post author, I can of course choose to moderate comments before publication, so they are displayed with the blog post only if I choose to.

Maybe the feed reading software should also be capable of displaying existing comments if requested, to give context to the person wanting to comment. Or we could consider that this is where the integration ends, and where a visit to the blog post itself is in order. To be discussed, in my opinion.

There is really something about having to leave the reading space to interact with something you’re reading that is extremely problematic. Super users who juggle tabs and apps all day might not think it matters, but normal people who can’t tell their browser from the internet or a search engine will be lost. We need spaces where we can read-like-answer-share without being teleported to some strange new place without having wanted it.

Some practical considerations: let’s say we start implementing this. The technical details are beyond me, but I understand enough to know that not all blogs (or subscribable publications) will be “compatible” with the system from the get-go. No problem: grey out those interaction buttons that won’t work in the reader, and leave the link allowing the user to head out to the blog proper to comment or like. Sharing should always be possible, as each post has a permalink (at least we have that now).

Write where you read

This was for starters. Now for the first big idea: integration with the blogging software.

In other words: maybe all this “subscribing to things” should happen in the blogging tool – or the RSS reader needs to become a blogging client. Take your pick.

Here’s why. As I mentioned before, in the old, old days of blogging, blogs did not have comments. People linked to each other when they had something to respond. Some blogs, still today, do not have comments. And that is fine, it’s a personal choice. For me, the soul of the blogosphere is people reading each other and linking to each other. And we need tools that encourage that.

I think this is also something that can help fight against the “loneliness” some of us feel around blogging, compared to the busy experience of taking part in the socials. Think about this: on the socials, you’re writing your tweet, facebook post, toot, update or whatever on a page (whether on the web interface or in an app) that is filled with stuff your contacts have published. You are producing content that is going to go on and be part of this stream of updates. It feels like part of the newsfeed already. Even though everybody has a different newsfeed, it doesn’t feel like sending something out into the void. It feels like contributing to a collective space. And this is what blogging should feel like.

So my reading tool should allow for three things (at least), in that respect:

1. create a blog post (mention or response) based on the one I’m reading, as already mentioned previously; bonus points if it makes it easy to quote part or parts of the post (think how easy forum software makes this)
2. write a blog post from scratch, just like we normally do today in our blog admin interfaces (think “facebook post” here rather than “tumblr” for the vibe: a space a the top of your reading list that is there waiting for you to write a post, not nagging but inviting and tempting…)
3. convert a comment you are writing on somebody else’s blog post into a blog post of your own, with a link to the original post – I’m pretty certain I’m not alone in regularly thinking “I just have a sentence or two to say” and lifting my nose up after having written 5 paragraphs; happens on the socials too, particularly facebook, as it doesn’t have any character limit (this is a nice way to make blog interlinking easier)

WordPress Reader is on the right track, although it feels a bit like a rough draft (I particularly don’t like the web interface – too much empty space and not enough content). It shows the newsfeed of the blogs I’ve subscribed to, and an inviting box at the top to “write a quick post”. How the editor expands and what features it offers in this context leaves room for improvement, but the idea is there. It’s also missing easy-peasy subscription outside the wordpress.com platform, as far as I can see, but let’s note that it allows the user to switch between mailbox and newsfeed views, has a share button (Facebook and X), a repost button (which unfortunately opens the editor in another window, but in a nice move presents the reposted blog post in card format – why not?), a like button (internal to WordPress), and in-reader commenting.

Right. So far we have:

• a better “reader” experience, including frictionless subscription
• a more integrated way of reacting to what we’re reading
• reading and writing brought together in once place.

Bring in the socials

What is still missing (the second big idea) is how to tie this in with the socials. As I argued in part 2, interaction and conversation come in varying forms. Socials do not make blogging redundant, and neither does embracing blogging again make the socials redundant. Just as we still have a use for e-mail in the era of instant messaging, or phone calls in the era of voice messages.

We touched upon this issue earlier when mentioning that any post being read should be shareable to whatever platform we want. That’s pretty trivial and already somewhat possible (we have permalinks, remember, and on our phones at least, sharing to socials is always just a touch away). But that is not sufficient.

I see three key aspects in integrating the socials with the blogging experience I’ve been describing:

1. Tying “comments/shares on the socials” to the relevant post (this is the neverending Trackback/Pingback/Backtype/Webmention story)
2. Posting blog content to the socials (POSSE) or, more interestingly from my point of view, backfeeding from the socials to the blog (tools like Bridgy and TootPress are also in this space)
3. Allowing the blogging/reading tool to function as a client for the socials.

The first one is an old story, but what it means is that what people are saying on the socials about what I wrote on my blog is part of the conversation related to what I wrote, and it might be desirable to have a way to point the readers of the blog post to it. It’s the argument for having comments on the blog. Or a list of Webmentions (if I’ve understood correctly that they are the Trackbacks of today). Or not. The conversation is there, and the blogger should have the ability to make it visible from the core content. Beneath a blog post, you could have comments (some made from inside an integrated tool for reading/reacting/writing, some made directly on the site), links to other blog posts which mention it, and links (or quotes? TBD) to public content on the socials about it. As I understand it, Bridgy does this.

The second one is three-pronged: I might want to share my blog posts on the socials when I publish, publish to the socials using my blog (with a separate post-type or category for example), or I might want to repost/archive on my blog whatever I have shared on the socials. The first two are outwards-going. The third is inward-coming, but instead of being centred on a piece of content (the blog post) like described above, and therefore on the content of what was published on the socials, it is centred on the person (the blogger), and therefore a specific account (or accounts).

I see two reasons for wanting to do this: first, for safekeeping (create an archive or mirror of whatever you post on Bluesky on your blog, for example) or for resharing to another audience, maybe in a slightly different form, whatever one posted elsewhere. I want to elaborate on the second case, which is in my opinion more interesting (obviously, because it’s a need I have).

I’ve already mentioned before that participating on the socials is very frictionless. The barrier is low. We are in conversation mode. It is “speaking” more than it is “writing”. Therefore, my hypothesis is that however much we love our blogs and everything, it’s still always going to be easier to quickly throw out a link on the socials, or jot down a thought, share a photo, respond to somebody and find ourselves coming up with an idea. To me, there is a lot of raw material there which might be worth preserving. Sure, if you’re having a back-and-forth about getting ready to go to the gym, maybe not, but if you’re sharing links or bite-sized thoughts or commentary on the world or whatever, that’s different.

It would make sense to be able to gather that daily production from the various socials one is active on, and organise it in what would be the “socials” equivalent of a post on a link blog. How exactly will be the topic of another post, because I think it requires going into lots of little details. But suffice to say, for now, that the idea would be to give the blogger an option to repatriate whatever has leaked from the bloggers brain to the socials in a form that could be either publishable as-is, or edited before publishing, or why not, broken down into more than one post if needed. “Today on the socials”, or something like that.

So, at this point we want to be able to create a two-way path between the blog and the socials, to push posts to the socials, bring back commentary or mentions to the blog posts, and the blogger’s updates to the socials.

We can go a small step further and integrate into our reader/blogging tool a client for the socials. We’re already reading RSS feeds, why not also read the social newsfeeds?

Openvibe is a client that combines different socials and allows the user to also subscribe to RSS feeds within the same interface. This would be the corollary. And if we’re reading, and we have the ability to write blog posts from there in addition to comments, why not also be able to publish to the socials? I like the way Openvibe manages cross-posting: you can choose where you want to cross-post each time; when you mention somebody, a little dialog open so that you can mention them on the different socials you’re posting to – or just enter text if they aren’t everywhere.

I could start composing something to share to the socials, and partway through decide it should be a blog post: I’d select the blog as a destination (this would be somewhat similar to converting a comment I’ve started writing to a blog post, as described earlier), the interface would adapt, the cross-posting to the socials would become a “blog post share” in the background. This allows me to dynamically adapt where I’m going to post what I’m writing, as I’m writing it.

Having a reading interface with RSS feeds and the social newsfeeds together (with filters, obviously) replicates what actually happens on the socials when people share their blog posts (or even have an account for their blog) on the socials. This is more elegant, because it’s the actual subscription to the actual blog content, and doesn’t depend on the blogger making their content available through the socials.

Loose ends: comments elsewhere, web interface, modular

At this point we’ve got something that is really nicely integrated, but one thing is missing: comments made on other blogs. I dwelled on this a bit in part 1: this is one of the issues that coComment or Disqus tried to solve.

If the comment is made through the blogging-reading tool, it’s quite easy to capture (content and permalink, even title to the blog post it’s on). The only question would be how to display these comments (if desired, of course). In the sidebar (“my comments elsewhere”)? Collected in round-up posts like what comes from the socials (“my comments on other blogs this week”)? People will want different things, but it should be part of the package to make this possible.

What about comments made directly on other blogs? In an ideal world, the receiving blog would “notify” (webmention?) the commenter’s blog of the comment just made. But there would also have to be a way for the commenter to “secure” their comment, in case the blog in question doesn’t have the notification feature. I guess there are ways to do that with bookmarklets, browser extensions, or the like. Or why not by “sharing” the page one commented upon to the blogging-reading tool, with a way to indicate “there’s a comment of mine on this page”?

Throughout this post I’ve spoken about this integrated “tool” (or maybe app at times). As I see it, it should definitely have a web interface, like my WordPress blog has. Or Discourse. And be something that can be self-hosted, or managed. Apps are nice, but I think it’s clear today that tools or services should be available both through a “website” and an app.

It may seem like I’m describing “one more app/tool to rule them all”, but in my mind it’s not like that. I’m describing a set of principles. Just like we have various tools which allow blogging or reading RSS today, or various clients for Mastodon, this should not be a lock-in for a particular tool. Those with better understanding than me of ActivityPub, RSS, APIs and the like are most welcome to elaborate on how various protocols or frameworks could work together or be extended to make this kind of thing possible.

As I see it, with an agreement of how these different general features function, we could even go towards more modular tools, where I could use a WordPress base for blogging, which would be compatible with something derived from Openvibe for the socials integration, and have the choice between a future iteration of FeedLand or WordPress Reader or NetNewsWire for the reading part – and they would all integrate seamlessly in such a manner that I will not feel like I am using multiple tools, but one. There could even be add-ons/plugins (I heard this idea in this OTM interview of Jay Graber) to manage how you filter your RSS+socials timeline (algorithm? no algorithm? labelling?), how you mashup your socials of the day into pretty blogs posts – or not, etc.

I have the intuitive hope that something approaching my present pipe dream can be built around WordPress – particularly after hearing Dave Winer invite us to think differently about WordPress. I’m curious to see if what he’s cooking us with WordLand brings us in the kind of direction I’m thinking about. And of course, if you know of anything that makes what I’m talking about here reality, comment away!

PS Dave: haven’t yet listened to the podcasts (Exploring WordPress, Textcasting, and Open Web Standards and Dave Winer on Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing), but I will. It was either listen or write, I chose write!

PPS everyone: I didn’t proofread and I feel my writing is more clunky than usual today, sorry – brain still recovering. Point out the typos and broken sentences and I’ll go and fix them!

PPPS: might do a part 4 on privacy, and need to cover non-text content better, in addition to going into more detail regarding “Today on the socials” posts, so chances are there will be more in this series, at some point…