Today we updated another part of Micro.blog to support blog post summaries. When automatically cross-posting to Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and LinkedIn, the summary will now be included for long-form posts with a title. It will look something like this after being copied to the other platform:
Your title here: <link to blog post>
The summary of the post here.
For example, here’s this very post on Bluesky:
You can write these summaries yourself or have AI generate them for you from the text on the new post or draft editing screens. They are also included in your published JSON Feed. And for external feeds using JSON Feed, Micro.blog will also look for the summary and use it in the timeline and cross-posting.
I’ve also added support in the APIs — Micropub as summary and XML-RPC as mt_excerpt — so that third-party apps can get and set summaries. This is being tested now for an upcoming MarsEdit release.
Kuba Suder @manton.org Oh nice! That kinda makes it unnecessary for me to use this workaround of cross-posting separately after publishing so that I can add an extra comment, since I can use this summary for this. And it will also appear on Mastodon (I'm assuming that this includes the ActivityPub @ profile?).
Kuba Suder 🇵🇱🇺🇦 Oh nice! That kinda makes it unnecessary for me to use this workaround of cross-posting separately after publishing so that I can add an extra comment, since I can use this summary for this. And it will also appear on Mastodon (I'm assuming that this includes the ActivityPub @ profile?).
Manton Reece @mackuba.eu Actually it's not included in the ActivityPub version yet. I'll get that added by tomorrow, though. I think that is the last missing piece.
Manton Reece @mackuba.eu Actually it's not included in the ActivityPub version yet. I'll get that added by tomorrow, though. I think that is the last missing piece.
Daniel Rose sick! When I publish from Obsidian will the AI summary automagically work?
Manton Reece @drose Thanks! Not yet, because right now using the AI summary is a manual process. You have to edit the post in Micro.blog on the web and click the "Generate" button to fill it in. It could be automatic but feels better to start with a human reviewing and editing it if needed.
Numeric Citizen Daniel Rose right on. That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if I can craft a summary in Obsidian… hmm…
Mitch Wagner I like it. I might prefer it if just the summary gets cross-posted — not the title, but I'll have to play with it to be sure. I figure people will see the title in the link preview. Thanks!
Daniel Rose I just noticed that the summary on my latest long form post was auto populated by everything before the “more” tag. Nice.
Jason Becker I noticed summaries are not included in the JSON feed of my Timeline (https://micro.blog/feeds/jsonbecker.json)
Jason Becker @pratik I’m neutral to lean positive! I just didn’t think fetch was going to happen.
Jason Becker @pratik sorry— Mean Girls joke.
Jason Becker Jason Becker @pratik I realize now the joke is at the very end of that page— but she tries to create this slang term and finally like 2/3s through the movie the queen cool girl is fed up and said “stop trying to make fetch happen”
💬 John Philpin 
Bob Wertz Really nice implementation. Exactly what I was hoping for.
Manton Reece Manton Reece @jsonbecker Good catch. I’ll update those feeds this week.
💬 John Philpin @pratik well it’s hard to miss you when you’re still here!
Mark Stoneman FYI, the summary feature doesn't work when doing a manual cross-post from the web UI. I'm guessing this is an oversight. Or at least I'm hoping it is.
Manton Reece @markstoneman Yeah, I wasn’t sure if it should be included on the manual page at first, but it probably should be. I’ll add it. Thanks.