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.
