Micro.one will not have source feeds

Off and on for years I had been trying to figure out what a more slimmed down version of Micro.blog would look like. Maybe text-only blog posts, no photos? Maybe only short posts, or only long-form posts? Maybe some limit with podcasting? But taking away certain features undermines the mission of helping people blog.

We can’t disable custom domain names, for example, even though that’s an obvious point to upsell, because domain names are at the core of what the product is.

Finally, I figured it out: we can remove the Sources page. Source feeds are Micro.blog’s plumbing, how it routes posts between blogs and the social web. When you post to your blog, it’s generating RSS and JSON feeds, which are then read back in to copy posts to Micro.blog’s timeline and cross-post to Bluesky, Threads, and elsewhere. This flexible is what gives Micro.blog the unique power of bringing external RSS feeds (not hosted on Micro.blog) into the timeline.

You can still have your own blog without external feeds and cross-posting to other services, though. And you can still connect to the fediverse because ActivityPub is baked into the platform.

So that’s what we’re doing for Micro.one. Removing the Sources page hides some of the complexity, eliminating one of the most powerful but confusing parts of Micro.blog. When you use Micro.one, you can blog and people on Mastodon can still follow you, but there’s less to configure.

I hear some of you saying: “But wait, I use the Sources page to add WordPress or Glass feeds, and to cross-post to Threads and Bluesky.” Great! Keep using it.

Micro.one does not replace Micro.blog. It’s a new option for people who aren’t using Micro.blog yet. If you are using Micro.blog, you are already in the right place.

If someone signs up for Micro.one and they later need the extra advanced features and cross-posting, they can upgrade from the $1 Micro.one subscription to the standard $5 Micro.blog subscription. It’s a natural upgrade without gimmicks.

Micro.one will be a complete product. No nags that make you feel you’re missing half the story. In some ways it’s a new foundation and new brand. It will evolve. I can’t wait to open it up in just a couple days.

Mark Gardner

@manton I’m confused because I don’t understand the “plumbing” you’re deciding to omit. Does this mean one won’t be able to follow these blogs via #RSS?

I hope that’s not true. I can’t in good conscience call something a #blog if I can’t follow it in my reader.

Simon Woods

Such a good idea. I'm in the midst of making stuff for TIL, and a fair amount of the high-priority resources are centred around Sources; it's an important part of the big package but, as is the case with power features, takes a degree of work to understand.

Pratik

This is a good omission to keep the product separate. Micro.blog effectively would then be Micro.one+

Amit Gawande :verified_coffee:

@manton I hope RSS feeds aren't impacted -- this phrase "without external feeds and cross-posting to other services, though” is confusing.

Nitin Khanna

@mjgardner @manton it seems to remove the feature where if you post to some other social network (or like in my case, to my own homegrown liveblog at liveblog.nitinkhanna.com) and have the RSS feed drop stuff into your microblog blog. Also something something about cross posting via RSS feeds. ActivityPub will work so I guess that’s something. And I guess outgoing RSS feeds will also work for feed readers?

Manton Reece

@mjgardner Oh no, RSS feeds for your blog is definitely still part of it. This is for the feature that essentially merges multiple RSS feeds into your Micro.blog profile.

Manton Reece

@amit It is confusing. Micro.blog does so many things with RSS feeds, I need to better document this.

jack

@manton thanks for the clarification! Really considering doing the sub now. I had the 10 day free trial but deleted my account just in case it charged me. I’m pretty interested in the idea of posting to your own site then it goes to other apps. Not reliant on any single point of failure - assuming you can export your data at any point?

Michael Hanscom

@manton A belated (because I just dug back through to re-read this post and so just saw the responses) thank you for the responses to the other people asking about this. I also read this as "RSS not supported", so it's good to see that that's not the case.

Manton Reece @manton
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