I’m making a bold move in my social networking workflow, inspired by these two posts by @moonmehta: this one and this other one.
I have unfollowed everybody in Micro.blog (after backing up the follow list, just in case I need to go back (You can do this by Exporting Follows in your Fediverse details in the Accounts section). and then subscribed everybody back via RSS (I use NetNewsWire for this).
The https://micro.blog/posts/user format (no .json nor .xml extension, just the plain user name) lets you subscribe to both posts AND replies of a certain user. Every post they publish and every reply they send, regardless of the recipient (I even found out that this format https://micro.blog/posts/'mastodon user' lets me subscribe to any Mastodon account via RSS).
The idea is twofold. On one hand, I limit even more the addictive nature of every social network, even a one like Micro.blog, limited-by-design. My Micro.blog timeline will not show my follow’s posts anymore, so I won’t need to be checking the web or the app like I used to do with Twitter and I still do with Micro.blog. That should help me own even more the time I give to my digital stuff.
On the other hand, scrolling down the timeline wouldn’t guarantee that I’d read every post from my follows, and I’d miss many of them. Having them in NetNewsWire will assure that I can read every post and reply and I won’t miss my favorite people’s insights.
I have started subscribing to 75 RSS feeds. This might change. I might see that I want to receive updates from a smaller number of people. Or I might like the system and follow even more people this way. I have 3.750 unread posts right now, so the Mark All As Read feature is going to be very handy in the beginning, and probably down the road too.
Engaging with the posts and replies might be a bit cumbersome. When I see a post I want to reply to, NetNewsWire opens the original blog. If the blog has the “Comment on Micro.blog” feature, it’s easy to reply to. If not, it’s a bit more difficult. Replies are opened directly in Micro.blog, so that’s not an issue. I’ll see how it goes.
So here’s a new try in my blogging/social networking journey. I want to write more and scroll less; I want to engage in meaningful conversations and read everything from the people I like. Above all, I want to own the experience and the time.
And one added benefit: this RSS feed https://micro.blog/feeds/eumrz.json now gives me my posts and the replies I receive from other people. That’s very cool. Thanks to Jatan for the idea.