Me: “My new French blog is nearly ready to go live. Will you read it?"

Her: “Well, yeah, sure, but how will I know there is something new to read?"

Me: “Well, you just have to go to the website, just like you read the news."

Her: “Mmm, but it’s not the same. I have to remember the website’s address. Can you send notifications instead?"

Me: “Well, I’m not sure this would fit the idea of a blog, but you just need to save it as a bookmark. Also, I can show you a great RSS reader?"

Her: “🤔"

Me: “It’s an app where you can read blog posts. There are many great ones for your iPhone or iPad."

Her: “Well, yeah, but I must remember to open it just to see if something is new?"

Me: “Yes, exactly, just like when you open up your favourite news website or when you just tap on the Facebook icon on your iPad…"

Her: “🤨"

Me: “If there was a weekly newsletter, would it be ok for you to read it?"

Her: “That would be better, for sure, but… you know… I already get so many emails!"

Me: “M’ok, but my hosting service doesn’t provide a newsletter feature. Maybe I could just tell you: there is something new on my blog that you might find interesting because I wrote a story about you."

Her: “👩🏻‍💻"

The challenges a blogger may face can be unpredictable.

Today, I think I finally found a real use case for Micro.one. I bought my domain and set up my account. It was rather quick and easy. If I had let Micro.one set up my domain name for me, it would have been even easier.

I think the ingredients of Micro.one are all there for an accessible solution for those who want to get out of Meta or other silos and start owning their little space on the web, free of tracking, free of ads, and built on open software technologies. Of course, Micro.one isn’t the only service of its kind. But it does offer the right feature set to be an open and federated web citizen.

I feel an overwhelming desire to explore and savor this type of web content even further. I believe that sharing my passion for this subject matter could potentially ignite a similar level of enthusiasm in those around me. Even if it doesn’t, if people are genuinely curious enough to inquire about the reasons behind my enthusiasm, it’s a positive development, potentially marking the beginning of something more substantial. After all, who knows what the future holds?

I’ll share more in the near future.

Medium seems to suffer from another problem: AI-generated content and fake account for fake engagement to generate revenues. According to their recent article (Paywall might be enforced to read this), many accounts under the Partner Program were suspended recently to stop this fraud.

I’ve returned to Medium last fall (read my comments about the reading and writing experience over there) and found that content quality has gone down compared to what we used to read there. The revenue program is much less generous than it used to be. I published 18 stories since my return and earned less than a dollar! We don’t know how these revenues are calculated, but it is a bit insulting or at least discouraging. At this rate, I won’t recover the Partner Program subscription cost in the first year which makes my presence there questionable. This should have been a no-cost journey which it’s not. Still seven months to go…