Vincent Ritter is the developer behind the excellent Gluon, a Micro.blog app for iOS and Android. He has been a long-time member of the community and helped push the Micro.blog API forward. As we look to all the things we want to do this year, I’m excited to announce that Vincent has agreed to join us as a part-time contractor to help me on the Micro.blog backend code.
This complements our announcement that all the iOS and macOS apps have been open-sourced. Having another set of eyes on the larger web platform behind Micro.blog will help us scale it as we grow the community, and Vincent’s experience developing third-party apps will make sure we don’t overlook improvements to the API that can benefit all apps.
But wait, is this like when Twitter acquired the third-party iOS app Tweetie, making it the foundation for Twitter’s own native app? Are we taking over development of Gluon? Nope. Vincent may help with the official apps in the future, but Gluon will continue as an independent project with the same access to the API as any other app.
It’s an important part of Micro.blog that there is an open API and a diverse set of third-party apps. Our business is simple — no ads, just pay for blog hosting if you want to — so we don’t need the official app to solve every problem or discourage third-party apps. Where we need help is improving the foundation of Micro.blog, the web interface, and expanding the API to make all apps better.
Vincent will also be joining us on a panel at Micro Camp — along with Daniel Jalkut and Sam Grover — to talk about developing for Micro.blog.
Thanks Vincent for your support of Micro.blog and for jumping into the server codebase!
