# With the Micro.blog timeline in place I'm now just anxious and excited to get going. I'm happy with how this site is set up and pleased with the things I've learnt to enable it, although I still need to dig deeper and become less of a hobbyist.
Blogs are thriving
If there's one thing that backing the Micro.blog Kickstarter has taught me it's that blogging is really holding its own.
The enthusiasm for self-hosted, independent blogging (beyond microblogging) is amazing and the range of available platforms, from CMS style set-ups to static site generators all of which I was unaware, is diverse.
Jekyll, Blot, Pelican, Kraken, Kirby, the list goes on. There are now so many ways to get your content online with just as many levels of complexity, most of which make my current setup seem ridiculously simple.
Still, it doesn't matter how you post just that you do!
What does matter is finding the best tools that fit the goals, knowledge and experience of the individual.
Some need as frictionless a solution as possible to encourage them to post more frequently while others enjoy a more complicated setup the complexities and challenges of which contribute to their blogging experience.
Although the passion for blogging is evident social networks have still taken most of the attention but self-hosting microblogs could have a dual function.
While the aim is to create a distributed social network, as self-hosting allows for both short and long form posts, those who start with just the former may be encouraged to mix it up and further reinvigorate the blogosphere.
Now there's a word that takes you back!
Comments
# Independently hosted microblogs could reinvigorate full blogging seeing as the platforms used can support both. The passion is there but needs encouragement.
In September last year I wrote that a lot of the blogs I historically followed had shut down or just stopped being updated. People didn’t appear to be writing any more – at least not on their own sites. We are constantly told there are millions of blogs out there but our experiences often imply that the numbers and reality don’t always tally. But, more recently, I think the problem is not that people aren’t blogging, but finding those that are. Recovery Blogging seemed to die back for a while but, as I wrote more recently, getting involved with the Micro.blog and, now, #indieweb communities has meant finding people who are, again, enthusiastic about their own sites. As a result I have been gradually re-populating my RSS reader with good, old-fashioned personal blogs. But I still want more! One of my hopes for Micro.blog was that it might encourage more people to write in long form once they got used to self-hosting their microposts. Since the launch to Kickstarter backers I have, indeed, seen a number state it has prompted them to return to their sites with more vigor and become re-engaged with what they are, or could be, doing. This is fantastic, but more needs to be done. A lot more. Discovery The biggest issue, as with so many other areas online, is of discovery. I’m not so sure that the blog rolls, directories and blogging networks of yesteryear, however, are the right solutions to the problem. We need to get better at both sharing and advertising blogs, those of others and our own. We need to reclaim the conversation from social media by using our own sites to reply and comment – this is where elements of the indieweb come into their own. But, most importantly we need to keep reading and writing, engaging with each other via our blogs to, at least, enable organic discovery.
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In September last year I wrote that a lot of the blogs I historically followed had shut down or just stopped being updated. People didn’t appear to be writing any more – at least not on their own sites. We are constantly told there are millions of blogs out there but our experiences often imply that the numbers and reality don’t always tally. But, more recently, I think the problem is not that people aren’t blogging, but finding those that are. Recovery Blogging seemed to die back for a while but, as I wrote more recently, getting involved with the Micro.blog and, now, #indieweb communities has meant finding people who are, again, enthusiastic about their own sites. As a result I have been gradually re-populating my RSS reader with good, old-fashioned personal blogs. But I still want more! One of my hopes for Micro.blog was that it might encourage more people to write in long form once they got used to self-hosting their microposts. Since the launch to Kickstarter backers I have, indeed, seen a number state it has prompted them to return to their sites with more vigor and become re-engaged with what they are, or could be, doing. This is fantastic, but more needs to be done. A lot more. Discovery The biggest issue, as with so many other areas online, is of discovery. I’m not so sure that the blog rolls, directories and blogging networks of yesteryear, however, are the right solutions to the problem. We need to get better at both sharing and advertising blogs, those of others and our own. We need to reclaim the conversation from social media by using our own sites to reply and comment – this is where elements of the indieweb come into their own. But, most importantly we need to keep reading and writing, engaging with each other via our blogs to, at least, enable organic discovery.
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