Similar to my announcement last month about supporting Bluesky, we’re adding Nostr cross-posting to Micro.blog starting today. You can enable it under Account → Edit Sources & Cross-posting:
Nostr might have the most uncertain future among recent up-and-coming social web protocols. I’m fascinated with the architecture because it’s so different than ActivityPub, RSS, and IndieWeb protocols. I think it’s interesting and worth tinkering with. I’ve been personally using it through Micro.blog for about a week, so why not let other folks play with it too?
Nostr is quite technical. If you don’t want to be on the edge, feel free to wait. It’s so early that using Nostr feels like testing a prototype, letting your blog posts loose into the wild west of the internet to float between Nostr “relay” servers.
To get started, you will need a Nostr account. Unlike every other social network, in Nostr you don’t actually register on a specific server. Your account is just a private key, which you will paste into Micro.blog. For iOS, I suggest using Damus or Nos. For the web, check out Coracle.
These apps and others will create your private key, name, and profile photo. Make sure to save your key in a password manager. If you lose it, you lose access to your account.
Micro.blog’s support for these emerging protocols is essentially one-way, pushing your blog posts out to people on other platforms. Later we will consider federation, where posts and replies from other platforms and brought into Micro.blog, like we already do for Mastodon and ActivityPub. I’d like to see how much traction there is before we do more.
Manton Reece @maique I had to take a break from Bluesky, there was so much going on over there.
Pedro Corá @maique glad that I am not the only feeling that. I was barely checking because it was overwhelming with content.
Pedro Corá @otaviocc I understand that. But so far, the only spoke about this possibility of federation, but until I see it happening, I'm considering it vaporware.
Jarrod Blundy Does your site offer a long posts-only RSS feed? I wonder if it would be too heavy-handed to have one available for all Micro.blog sites by default.
Manton Reece @jarrod Mine does, at /categories/essays/feed.xml. I think we never standardized it for everyone because I couldn't figure out what it should be called. "Long posts", "essays", etc... Everyone has a slightly different name.
Jarrod Blundy Maybe everyone gets automatic category filters of “long posts” and “short posts” by default, but they can be disabled or renamed?
Manton Reece @jarrod Maybe. Although I also wonder if the extra complexity ("what are these categories?") outweighs the benefit. We could have a tutorial on setting this up, or maybe a quick one-click solution similar to the filter checkbox for photos.
Jarrod Blundy That might be a nice middle ground. I know personally like subscribing to folks’ longer stuff via my RSS reader, but the way Micro.blog sites are by default that means I also get all the short posts too. With the guidance toward adding a title when longer and how those posts are displayed differently on the timeline, I think it would be pretty natural to have a little more automatic separation in the way people can subscribe to someone’s posts.
Manton Reece @birming Currently you'd need to use a theme to adjust the home page truncation automatically. But if you know where you want it truncated, inserting <!--more--> for the cut will work on the web and in the newsletter.
💬 John Philpin isn’t there already a ‘standard’ category called ‘Titled Posts’ ?
I would also vote for a better category management system first and before going too far down this route.
Makes note to self to add to the @pratik thread in help…
Odd-Egil “Oddzthrash” Auran @JohnPhilpin I read that as “Tilted posts”, and it got me thinking about my unofficial RFC about diagonally oriented screens. (Link is in absentia)
Manton Reece @JohnPhilpin Nope, there are no default categories for new accounts.
💬 John Philpin oh - i see what I have done - it is a rule I set up that is categorizing into 'Titled Posts'.
💬 John Philpin @odd and I read that and thought you were starting a thread on Porcupine Tree!
Jason Becker @jarrod mine is called “macro” but same idea as Manton. Auto category when a post has a title.
💬 John Philpin @jsonbecker yes - just realized that I had set that up - thought it was automatic. Now just disabled. It was great to pick up all the title posts to see what is there - but there are some posts I make with title - that don’t fit into my 'Long Form' posts - do now moved back to manual while I slowly sort out the history.
Jarrod Blundy @jsonbecker Me too, I set them up manually as “micro-posts” and “macro-posts” but I’m considering changing them to “short-posts” and “long-posts” for clarity.