Fediverse

2024-05-02

VCP 5 - #Substack: is the honeymoon over?

If someone is following you on Substack, there is no email address, and if you want to switch services, you won’t be able to take the followers with you. That’s not a newsletter. It’s social media.

Transcript

2024-05-01

I just finished recording the next podcast episode about why I’m leaving Substack and how ironic it is that Ghost is opening up by adopting the ActivityPub protocol while Substack is becoming a social media platform. 🤔 Hmm, the Fediverse is a good candidate for the main topic of the podcast.

2024-04-29

I am not sure if people are fully aware of the impact of Flipboard’s initiative to federate its content. The Fediverse was completely unknown to many of these publications. Thanks to Flipboard, we have access to all of them.

Flipboard Federates 11,000 Magazines by 400 Creators and Enthusiasts

Today Flipboard is taking two big steps toward opening its platform to the fediverse, making 400 creators and 11,000 of their curated Magazines visible to people in the fediverse and integrating fediverse notifications into the Flipboard app.

2024-04-28

If, like me, you’re wondering why Threads is adopting the ActivityPub protocol and joining the Fediverse, I suggest watching or listening to the latest DotSocial episode. @mike@flipboard.social asked them some pretty interesting questions.

2024-04-27

Are you seeing this? 👀 Yesterday, I started the migration process to move my followers from Mastodon to the Fediverse account that I’ll be using from now on, which is: @vladcampos@vladcampos.com

If everything went as expected, you are now following me here.

2024-04-26

Time to say goodbye to Substack.

The whole point of having a newsletter is to control the distribution of content.

I don’t know when this started, but I’m almost certain it wasn’t possible to just follow people on Substack before. I also don’t know if they are promoting or stimulating the “follow” option, but the number of people following me without subscribing to my newsletter is increasing every day.

Below is the difference, clipped from Substacks Help Center:

Follower: They’ll see your notes and some reading activity such as post likes. When someone follows you, you won’t receive their email, so they won’t get posts in their inbox.

Free subscriber: They’ll subscribe to your Substack and receive free posts via email and/or the Substack app. They’ll automatically follow you and see your notes in their feed.

In other words, if someone is following you, there is no email address, and if you want to switch services, you won’t be able to take the followers with you. That’s not a newsletter. It’s social media.

In a world where more and more services are embracing to the Fediverse, Substack’s move to a closed system is mind-boggling to me. But just leaving the service wasn’t enough. I had to share this information with you. So, if you have a newsletter on Substack, maybe it’s time to start to reevaluate your strategy.

I’m not sure when I’ll be leaving, but it’s likely to happen sooner than later. For now, if you want to make sure to follow me to my next newsletter chapter and keep getting my monthly emails, please don’t follow me. Subscribe.

2024-04-24

Heads up. I’m doing some experiments here and for the next few days (possibly weeks), I’ll be reading and replying to #Fediverse posts alternating between my two handles: @vladcampos@mastodon.social and @vladcampos@vladcampos.com

2024-04-23

As an increasing number of businesses and organizations adopt the ActivityPub protocol, it will gain momentum and eventually reach a point where there is no going back. Welcome to the Fediverse, Ghost: activitypub.ghost.org

2024-04-18

VCP 4 - Building a central hub to help you share your thoughts and ideas (with: Manton Reece)

Manton Reece, the creator of Micro.blog, talks about the journey that led him to build a platform that enables users to apply the IndieWeb principle of first posting on their own blog, and then strategically cross-posting or sharing links on social media. Obviously, topics such as ActivityPub, the AT protocol, and the Fediverse in general were also discussed. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed producing this episode.

Transcript

2024-04-17

Early today, I had a wonderful conversation with @manton@manton.org about Microblog, IndieWeb, and ActivityPub. It will be released in a couple of days as episode 4 of my podcast, as well as a video on my YouTube channel.