👉🏻 Well, that was fast: @numericcitizen@techhub.social 😎

Reasons why I joined this Mastodon instance. 1) I like the name “techhub.social”. 2) It’s operated by a Canadian. 3) He speaks french and has a Ukrainian flag on his profile.. 4) I’ll be able to see the interaction between Micro.blog and a Mastodon instance.

Micro.blog will stay my home, but I’ll experiment with Mastodon, even though I said and wrote that I would focus this year. Damn.

What's Really Behind a Subscription Fee?

This video from birchtree@mastodon.social resonated greatly with me today. Here’s why.

First, someone is finally calling out something about software subscriptions that I always wanted to call out myself. Every developer seems entitled to charge a subscription for whatever reason. Matt brilliantly illustrates that some subscriptions are ok, some are borderline ok, but others are not.

For applications like Notion or Craft, developers must pay costs for hosting the backend. For example, Craft’s backend seems to be on the AWS cloud. In that specific case, it’s clear that a subscription makes sense. So we must help the developers pay their bills, right?

Things get more controversial when the developers charge for a subscription, even though no backend services are required. Why would the developers go with a subscription model, then, you might ask? Well, this is where I want to chime in. The developers may not have to pay hosting costs, but what about their development time? It is as if we value infrastructure costs more than craftmanship time. It should not be this way.

I’m willing to pay for software or service using a subscription if the product comes with updates regularly. Matt has shown Tweetbot as an example. Well, this isn’t the best example because Tweetbot rarely gets any updates; it doesn’t fit my criteria for using a subscription. CleanShot X, absolutely yes. I recognize, through my subscription, not only the value of the service but the time it took to put it together and keep it running fine. I’m willing to support the developer for that through a subscription.

We pay 5$ for a drink that takes less than a minute to prepare at Starbucks. Why is it so hard to pay for developers’ time, spending weeks or months writing great software? Also, we must try to consider not only backend bills when deciding that a subscription is ok; craftmanship is something to pay for too.

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Something will have to happen in 2023 in the Mastodon world. I would love to join (even though I said I wouldn’t). Now that I’m starting to get it, to understand all this is about, I fail miserably at finding an instance that I can join and fit my content publishing desires. 

I really like how Substack is evolving as a platform for content creators, especially for writers. I kept my account open after moving from Substack to Ghost.org. You may disagree with the fact that you don’t really own the content or whatever, but Substack is evolving quite a bit. If I compare the features set when it started and today, it is night and day. They are really killing it. As a member of Substack (free) and Ghost (paid), I would say Substack > Ghost.

I would really like to find a niche use case for Substack. And I thought that 2023 was the year of focusing more.

Thought of the day: airports are probably the most user hostile commercial environment that we can think of. Bad UX. Wrong expectations management in general. Badly designed physical areas. The list goes on and on. Convince me of the opposite. 🫤

Thinking About 2023 and My Future Creative Projects or Experimentation

It’s the time of the year where I start to think of my upcoming year from a content creation perspective and as someone who likes to try new things. Here are a few things that I’m going to explore. First, as a subscriber of SoundCloud, I’m finding it hard to find content for my DJ mixing experimentation. More often than not, those publishing content on SoundCloud wants you to buy  what's available on Beatport. Someone told me recently to use Beatport instead. I may switch from SoundCloud to Beatport for 2023. Second, I’ll continue my slow migration from Smugmug to my Exposure page. Smugmug was good but didn’t fit well with what I expected from a modern photo-sharing service. Third, I finally found a use case for recording videos with CleanShot. I’ll use it to add short video clips showing how to use specific features and tricks in Craft. Those clips will be added to The Craft Bible (a website dedicated to Craft, the document writing app) and will come as a complement to my YouTube channel. It’s fun to be full of projects.

A Few Takeaways About My Mastodon-Related Questions Today

Thanks to all who replied to my question regarding Mastodon. What a great community over here! Never had this in fifteen years on Twitter. 😊

Here are a few takeaways (many may be obvious, duh!). 

  1. Just like for emails, one cannot "reserve" a username in the Mastodon-friendly world. Makes sense.
  2. Registering with a specific instance (or server) is mandatory just like opening an account with an email provider. 
  3. Using a custom domain that I own is something I should consider doing. 
  4. I should probably go ahead with my custom domain name for Micro.blog before doing anything related to Mastodon. 
  5. Setting my websites (I do have a few) to display my Mastodon username or profile is a good idea too. 
  6. Setting my Mastodon profile to display my website is another good practice.
  7. Finding an instance I can relate to is probably the most daunting task if my research is any indication. I didn’t find any so far. 
  8. I still don’t understand how a Micro.blog compatible Mastodon name is helping in any of this. 
  9. Having a registered account on a Mastodon won’t do much for me. I already get everything I want on Micro.blog. People can follow me from their Mastodon instance, and I can, too, from Micro.blog. 
  10. Thinking about all this on Christmas day shows that I don’t have a life! LOL

Anyway, happy holidays to you all! 👋