I’ve recently been tinkering with Local first apps. That’s been getting me thinking a lot about distributed systems. What if we could all go back to blogging on our sites, but with a slight change.

When twitter first came on the scene, it was termed "microblogging". This idea that you could quickly post a thought and publish it for others to not only see and read, but to comment and engage with.

I think this is why it was so powerful, and how it seemingly destroyed blogging for the most part. It's harder to write lengthier posts. So much more effort than simply a quick tweet. But now that means we have to use this centralized platform. One that we don't have control over.

In the past year after the Musk takeover of twitter, we've seen lots of folks leave the platform and move to other places. Some left social media entirely. Even the platform itself has changed.

What if instead of "having" to use a singular platform like twitter, threads, bluesky, etc, you could simply publish to your blog. It could be as small of a post as you want with only text. It can be creatively filled with images and illustrations. Even an interactive post with mdx fueled by components from your favorite framework.

What would this look like practically? Discovery seems to be the primary issue and catalyst for current social networks today. Things like Google Reader being killed really haven't helped this situation. I don't have all of the answers, but I wonder if as a community we could figure out something that resembles the web of the past. One in which everyone got to groom their own garden how they wanted.