Monday, June 30, 2025 • 2 min read
I’ve returned to the comfortable folds of Micro.blog after an eight-week hiatus. I’m calling my time away a sabbatical, and like all such experiences, I learned two important things about myself in the process.
First, I thought I could wean myself from using social media. That was impossible. Spending time on Bluesky taught me why the core values of Micro.blog work so well. On Bluesky, I felt obligated to “follow back” those who followed me, and even without ads or algorithms, memes and inane reposts flooded my timeline.
After two years of mild annoyance at Micro.blog for not showing me my followers, it finally clicked with me on why this is so essential. Here, you follow only those you find interesting. There’s no compunction to do otherwise. Unfollowing someone as your interests change doesn’t represent a moral quandary. My timeline here is much more engaging and relevant.
Second, and more importantly, I learned how special this community is to me. I’ve made friends here. I’ve commiserated and celebrated with so many here. And I’ve watched events unfold that tested our collective mettle.
Recently, I witnessed personal attacks from outside of Micro.blog on Manton Reece for his alleged fascist and exclusionary views. I can think of many politicians who deserve this vitriol, but Manton Reece? Are you kidding me? Manton walks a tightrope of being both the owner of Micro.blog and frequent blogger. In such a divided world, I’ve wondered whether this is wise or even possible. It can’t be easy. Yet, he pulls it off, again and again, with principles and respect.
While you can never win an argument with a troll, you can still make a difference. For me, that was returning and resubscribing to Micro.blog.
For Manton.
Monday, May 5, 2025 →
After poking and prodding the capabilities of Micro.blog for the past 18 months, I have decided to consolidate my online writing on Wordpress where I’ve kept a blog for more than a decade.
This wasn’t an easy decision. Micro.blog is an innovative, capable, affordable service run by a smart, conscientious entrepreneur. It balances simplicity and power like no other blogging platform.
I’m always curious about why a blogger leaves a certain platform and moves to another. In case this is helpful to others, I’m sharing why I am making this change.
Continue reading →
Monday, March 17, 2025 →
Om Malik recently launched a separate “daily” blog, which looks like a subdomain off his Wordpress site. For folks who keep a Wordpress blog, have you considered this as an alternative to separate Wordpress/Micro.blog sites for short and long posts? Puzzling through a longer term solution to POSSE.
Sunday, October 15, 2023 • 4 min read
How I fell into a trance with the Indy blog service, Micro.blog, is a curious story.
I received a renewal invoice from HostGator notifying me that the cost of my bi-annual web hosting service was going up 58%. Quick math informed me that I was paying too much for a personal blog. Surely there must be a less expensive alternative? That question led me down many paths, most leading me in circles.
Moving to Wordpress.com seemed like a good idea until I realized its plug-in-enabled service made even HostGator’s renewal price seem like a steal. I considered Medium and Substack, but their continual pestering readers to subscribe to their respective services didn't mesh with my belief in the value of an open internet. Many other competing web hosting services offered attractive short-term teaser rates but would require constant leapfrogging from service to service to remain affordable.
One service — Micro.blog — caught my attention briefly. $5 a month for hosting your blog with your own domain, a federated service that automated cross-posting to all sorts of other sites, and a blogging platform that allowed you to publish both long essays and short tweet-like updates to a timeline with no ads and no algorithms. No spam, no trolls. No fake news. Just old-fashioned blogging.
As I dug deeper for alternatives, I was reminded that HostGator not only supplied my personal blog but also housed my boat blog, our family website, their respective registered domains, and, importantly, email accounts for my entire family. Canceling HostGator would be a considerable disruption. Moving to a competing hosting service would be a chore—a big one.
After a week of researching my website options, I called HostGator about the price increase. The call took five minutes of mild negotiating. By the time I hung up, they had reduced the increase by two-thirds. It was still going up 17%, but given the cost of other services and the work involved in switching, I felt I was getting a bargain. I would keep my blog on WordPress with HostGator for another two years.
But, I kept thinking about Micro.blog.
Like many, I've grown distrustful of the big social media sites. I have accounts on most, but I rarely look at them or post to them. An impersonator tried to take over my Instagram account a few weeks ago. My Twitter (X?!) feed is filled with all sorts of craziness. What happened to human civility? Facebook is all ads, and God help me if I click on any of them. When a service is free, you and your posts are the product. That's Business 101. I know there is still a lot of good on these sites, but it’s buried so deep that slogging through it fills me with despair. With all the heady promises that technology would bring us closer together, how did we end up here?
Maybe, I mused, I still needed Micro.blog after all. What if, alongside my longer posts on my regular blog, I shared the updates on Micro.blog that I used to post on social media? I kept thinking: no ads and no algorithms. No spam, no trolls, no likes, no push for followers, no sensational posts designed to go viral. Nothing goes viral on Micro.blog, so there's no need to push fake news—just honest thoughts, pictures, and videos amidst a community of like-minded creators.
What ultimately convinced me to sign up with Micro.blog was learning about its founder, Manton Reece ([@manton](https://micro.blog/manton)). I read his blog posts about the purpose of Micro.blog. I perused his manifesto on Indie Microblogging. I watched a few videos of him being interviewed, looking to me like a young Steve Jobs, clearly brilliant, explaining the social good of the service and how he and his team are trying to make the world a better place through this technology. His scorn for traditional social media is palpable. I liked him at once. He's one of the good guys. You can tell. How could I not support this cause?
So, I have joined Micro.blog ([@robertbreen](https://micro.blog/robertbreen)). You can follow me there by clicking the menu link at the top of my home page at robertbreen.com, or you can see a summary of my latest updates on the right sidebar on most of the pages on my website. Essays and longer posts will still appear here on the regular blog. Shorter posts and updates on my travels, the books I'm reading, and the daily happenings in my life will hit Micro.blog. I hope you'll have a look. And who knows? You might be the next to fall under the curious trance of Micro.blog and its mission to save blogging.