A Question Of Platforms

When publishing a link post yesterday about blogging feeling more away from regular social media, the main point picked up on was comments on my posts. As Curtis Hale points out there is no provision for people to leave comments on my posts, other than replies on micro.blog.

I chose micro.blog recently due to its social side and also the nature of the platform allowing me to post everything in one place. I didn’t spend any time wondering where does this go, and put short ‘tweets’, Instagram style photos and long blog posts all on one blog. Making the experience a bit more personal.

In exchange for this I get a much more rigid platform than the WordPress one I came from, and rely totally on one persons vision for what he wants. Manson does an excellent job of running micro.blog but that’s not really the point, that is to say that I have given over a large portion of control to another person. Much like Facebook and Twitter dictate what I can and can’t post, micro.blog controls the way the platform works and how it moves forwards.

When thinking about comments the only thing that works are micro.blog replies. I should be able to pull in replies from Twitter using bridg.y now, but it has never worked. I no doubt could look at other options and try and run a stand alone commenting system, but this would be hacked on rather than an integrated solution. Giving over this large level of control sometimes feels freeing at times, but in equal measures frustrating.

If the platform decides to go a direction that you don’t want to then you are at its mercy, or you pack up and leave. Something that should be easy to do, but often at times isn’t. Perhaps something more open is better suited to what I want to achieve, or where I want my blog to go.

I am lucky in the fact that I can usually mold things to get to where I want to be and if I think about comments and the potential of avoiding the trappings of social media, my current platform does not provide it. I guess its important to think about these things when you give over control, and rember that needs can change a lot faster than platforms do.
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