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I don't know if it's just because I've been paying more attention to the #indieweb recently but striking out on your own definitely seems to be more popular lately.

Perhaps it's just a bit of observation bias where you see (or at least pay attention to) more of what you're focused on.

Bias or not, an increasing number of people are closing their accounts and leaving social networks but not the social web.

So, what's the difference?

What is social? It is interacting with others, engaging with them in some way, being part of something bigger than just yourself.

Forget about content silos for a moment, but "social networks" are still concentrated in a particular place. We may be able to interact with them in multiple ways and even POSSE our content back to them from outside via gateways and APIs, but the actual network is self-contained.

A network is comprised of nodes and edges (the connections between those nodes) and the activity graph is everything that happens across it.

A social network contains those nodes so, while we may map out our graph, it exists solely within their domain and is therefore owned by the network.

You may be able to export your data but you can't export your graph because the nodes and edges aren't transferable. Well, not without getting everyone to move all at once.

You can still be social without a social network - and by that I mean a centralised one owned by a company.

Of course, you need a social network; even if you only have one friend you still have a network - it is only small with just two nodes but it's still a network in a purely "connected items" sense.

Now, if we choose to map that network then we hold that map. My blog contains posts that are likes or replies while other posts contain links to other people. My directory page lists incoming connections from people who have liked, mentioned or replied to my posts.

It's disorganised but it's still a map, a social graph.

And I hold it.

Just as I have mine other people hold theirs and so on, and they are all sections of a much larger, interdependent network.

The difference is, however, that each section exists in its own space and is not centrally controlled. I will always hold and own my graph, just as you will yours.

We don't need to export or transfer anything because, as long as you remain at the same domain, all the nodes are always available, not locked away behind the walls of someone else's network.

We don't necessarily have the convenience of a centralised network for establishing connections, patterns and friends of friends, but we also don't have a landlord trying to leverage those connections for financial gain while we rent our space within their property.

Discovery may be harder but we can temporarily borrow the graphs of others, following the connections from our own.

We become more discerning when making new connections, adding new nodes, due to the greater investment in finding them. Our graphs become more meaningful, more valuable and more rewarding.

I know which I'd rather pick.

When creating my webmentions author directory I originally wanted to avoid any reliance on the #indieweb Semantic Linkbacks plugin, as not everyone will be using it, and I wanted to keep things fairly self-contained.

It also meant that if you are not using webmentions you could just remove that argument from the initial query and just use the template for any comments.

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn't provide proper support for comment types as it does post types.

So, when a webmention reply is received (as opposed to likes or RSVPs etc.) WordPress the plugin converts it to a normal comment, removing its 'comment_type' value. This means it doesn't get caught if filtering for only webmentions. (Thanks to Michael for the full lowdown.)

In order to catch these replies I am forced to add a check against the 'semantic_linkbacks_type' for each comment to see if it is actually a reply.

$wmreply = get_comment_meta( $comment->comment_ID, 'semantic_linkbacks_type', true );

  then check if

$wmreply == 'reply'

The original query included 'type' => 'webmention' but this, obviously, had to be removed so that the linkbacks check could be performed against all comments.

Combining the two type checks gives the desired result but, for my purposes, there is a caveat.

I wanted the directory to list those engaging via directly from their own sites but the above also lists replies send from Micro.blog as the service supports webmentions. I have, therefore, added it to the list of exceptions not to return authors for - I had already excluded my own domains and blank urls.

The current (sanitised) version of the directory page template is available on GitHub.

Lightbulb moment

After making these changes I realised there should actually be an easier way, or a more streamlined one at least.

What if when a comment is received we immediately perform the linkbacks type check and, if true, rewrite the comment_type value back to the comments table in the database?

But that's a project for another time.

While listening to the audio from a presentation by Tantek Çelik in 2014 (video on YouTube) I was struck by his contrasting the experiences offered by social networks and blogs/RSS readers.

He argues the most pivotal reason that social networks took over the web was they had "an integrated posting and reading interface" where you could see what everyone else was doing and instantly reply or add your own updates in situ.

But if you were reading blogs you would "go over to your feed reader, you'd read your feeds ... and then you go to a completely different interface ... to write a blog post."

Bang! Like a sledgehammer to the head.

It seems so obvious, too obvious, that we don't really see it until it's pointed out.

In situ!

The process we go through to read and write on the web is ridiculously disjointed and has been for too long.

Convergence

It's only now, in 2017, that something like Micro.blog is trying to blur the lines - there is the combined reading and posting interface but the content is hosted on your (micro)blog so you are reading other people's blogs and instantly replying or posting on your own.

It's a start but it's still not there. It's only for microblogs and only for those people actually on the service.

He goes on, however, to say that the silos are running out of ideas but here we are nearly three years later and the position is, sadly, even more entrenched with Facebook rapidly approaching two billion users.

That's over a quarter of the world's population.

Crazy!

The #indieweb movement takes us a little further by allowing us to interact with other "full" blogs from our own but we still have to go to one location to read, get the link for that then return to wherever it is that we write in order to respond.

Integrated

Why didn't the open web grow in the same manner and why, three years later, are we still asking the same questions? Tantek talks about learning from the silos and applying some of their best features to personal sites but it is scratching the surface.

Hearing him talk about integrated interfaces, my initial reaction was a combined feed reader/blogging environment.

It is becoming increasingly popular for enthusiasts to host their own web-based RSS readers so, surely it is a logical step to integrate this with your blog.

If you are able to read other's posts without your own environment then any action you take on them, like with Micro.blog, could be instantly posted to your blog and distributed from there.

Likes, mentions, replies, RSVPs, any type of webmention or length of posting could happen from within the reading interface - all from your own property.

Some people use browser extensions or bookmarklets to take certain actions directly from the source page, rather than returning to their own, but this is still only one part of a solution.

The Browser

Jonathan LaCour pointed me towards some thoughts he had written on the subject but I wanted to get my own down before reading his post.

He makes a number of similar points to those above but states that the browser itself is an ideal vehicle for uniting the consumption and creation experiences as they are the delivery mechanism.

I would argue that we would be better served by our own hosted solutions as we could then access them from any browser regardless of whether it was capable or personally configured.

Still, as he says, the building blocks are all there; it just needs someone to put them all together.

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.

Realising that I had not cross-posted a few of my recent items to Medium got me thinking.

After mentioning that I was not reading much there either I find it curious that there should be such a change in my online behaviour in so short a space of time.

This wasn't a deliberate act, I forgot to change the options on the Medium plugin for these posts, but I still don't feel compelled to go back and do it.

Although POSSEing your content to other places isn't a requirement for having an #indieweb property they generally go hand in hand.

Most people will still engage on the same services they have been using, or reply to other people's posts, but just make sure that they are putting the original items on their own site.

It can, therefore, be surprising when someone says they won't be syndicating their posts.

Returning to the subject of display and distribution, however, not syndicating your content - or, at least, not syndicating all of it - makes a good degree of sense.

If distribution or syndication doesn't work then don't do it, simple. Keep things where they are, where they look how they should, within the context in which they were created.

Some content types work well when distributed so, if it's not a chore to do it, why not? Use these as the bait to the blogging hook.

Hand in hand with data ownership we should be leading by example to encourage more direct site visits rather than viewing via a third party service.