I joined Micro.blog many years ago around the time Manton Reece announced public access to the site following a successful crowdfunding campaign but I never used it. Micro.blog arrived around the time Mastodon and the concept of Federation came around but it took years for these networks to see resurgence from outside of the Indie Web. Writing about the Indie Web can fill many volumes but in short, Indie Web and Federated Social Media are linked closely to Data Portability, Open Web and a philosophy that users should be the customer, not the product, that their data is owned by them and they should be free to take out their data in a portable open format. While the amount of Indie Web networks has grown over the last 20 years, their share of the social media space has shrunk significantly. Facebook would argue that that their product has nearly reached every human on earth and so user growth is relative to the amount of people being born and coming of age (13 in USA) to join one of their properties. Their attention now is on how many people engage with a Facebook property every year.
The Indie Web has not touched every human and the community is measured in the few millions than billions. There’s a lot of room to grow but I digress.
I abandoned social media where I was the product in 2011. I rejoined Instagram with a new account focused on motorcycles in 2021 because many of my fans who read my magazine articles or watched my online videos complained that Flickr.com wasn’t where they wanted to see my photos. I joined Instagram but I didn’t use it, using an auto-poster, following no one and never having the application installed. In January of 2025, I deleted that Instagram account with no notice. Flickr supports open web standards and data portability. I’m choosing them for my photo storage going forward.
Where was I microblogging after leaving Twitter? I had used a few self-hosted options over the years but nothing really stuck and it was federated media that got me back in. I joined Mastodon a year ago but I just moved everything over to Micro.blog.
Why? Because Micro.blog is awesome!
What initially brought me back over is their new product offering – https://micro.one It’s $1 a month (I was paying $5 a month for Masto.host hosting of my own instance and the media storage was filling up quickly where I’d need to jump to a higher tier. I then realized that Micro.blog wasn’t just a great piece of software with 1st party apps for iPad, iPhone and Mac and support for data portability, open standards and transparency regarding customer data and how moderation is performed but I also realized that I could migrate the community I built on Mastodon over to Micro.blog.
Here’s the checklist to migrating from Mastodon over to Micro.blog:
- Visit Micro.one and create an account
- Federate and pick a username (documented here)
- Visit your mastodon admin / user control panel and initiate a migration to Micro.blog by mentioning the federated username
- Export all of your Mastodon data and import that into Micro.blog there’s information here on how to do that
- Then you just start using Micro.blog.
You can also import your data from Instagram, FourSquare (Swarm), WordPress, Twitter and other services. I imported my Instagram photos but because FourSquare and Twitter data is huge and old and mostly private, I decided to not import that.
My Mastodon instance has been shut down and now I’m saving $40 or so bucks a year by using Micro.one and their apps are pretty good. I do miss TweetBots Ivory for Mastodon but no big complaints about the app options especially for $1 a month (Ivory was $25 a year).
There is one big thing about Micro.blog’s product that you should be aware of. There are no follower counts or stats. You don’t know who favorited (bookmarked) your post and you don’t know how many people viewed the post, only if they reply to it. This might turn off people who have learned to rely on engagement as a way to know if their thoughts are popular and sticky. I am celebrating this because honestly it makes no difference to me and my life how many people are following me and in fact, it creates an unhealthy relationship with the community of people who read what I write. I measure them in the conversations and relationships we have and instead of converted into an audience with a number and measurement of my success. I think that’s unhealthy. No one who you meet socially asks you how many friends you have and how many times they text you every day. That isn’t how people in real life measure other people’s social worth. It’s kind of weird when you think about it.
Other things I’m loving about Micro.blog. If I upgrade to a $5 a month plan, I can add another blog, start hosting podcasts, upload videos and access more custom scripts, designs, themes and more. Also, the founder Manton is really engaged with the community and cares deeply about everyone’s experience especially in regards to inclusivity and belonging. I’m also just amazed at how much the Micro.blog product is maintained, improved and its overall availability (measured in downtime) despite a very small team working on it. The way we can help that is by having more people join.
So, if you have $1 a month and want to support the Indie Web and honestly consolidate your posts from all over the Internet to one space and feel a sense of belonging no matter where you live or the diversity you bring, Micro.blog is for you. I think the $1 plan is only available to the first 3,000 people who sign up.
Now, I’m basically on two spaces full time. My blog which is self-hosted on WordPress and Micro.blog. I continue to upload videos of motorcycles to YouTube but I don’t consider myself a YouTube user. I don’t use YouTube except to upload to it. I have a Flickr.com account for photo storage but don’t consider that a community anymore…Flickr feels differently but I feel Flickr is just a good web steward but not a social network and may never be again unless they can create a product that truly is a replacement to what Instagram was. I would love that but no guarantee that it would succeed.
I have some long term thoughts on WordPress as Matt Mullenwag continues to behave as he has been. I don’t disagree with Matt philosophically but his approach is not healthy for the community and it has me reconsidering my relationship with WordPress. With micro.blog, I do have a path to abandon WordPress forever. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I have my shared WordPress hosting plan until Summer of 2026. Let’s see if I am still a WordPress customer in a year. I don’t have to be and could save some money long term in the process.
Thanks for reading and I’m so thrilled to have a permanent micro blogging home. The link to that blog is at the top of this post in the header. If you’re reading via RSS, that link is here.