The syndicate

Social networks come and social networks go.

Right now, there���s a whole bunch of social networks coming (Blewski, Freds, Mastication) and one big one going, thanks to Elongate.

Me? I watch all of this unfold like Doctor Manhattan on Mars. I have no great connection to any of these places. They���re all just syndication endpoints to me.

I used to have a checkbox in my posting interface that said ���Twitter���. If I wanted to add a copy of one of my notes to Twitter, I���d enable that toggle.

I have, of course, now removed that checkbox. Twitter is dead to me (and it should be dead to you too).

I used to have another checkbox next to that one that said ���Flickr���. If I was adding a photo to one of my notes, I could toggle that to send a copy to my Flickr account.

Alas, that no longer works. Flickr only allows you to post 1000 photos before requiring a pro account. Fair enough. I���ve actually posted 20 times that amount since 2005, but I let my pro membership lapse a while back.

So now I���ve removed the ���Flickr��� checkbox too.

Instead I���ve now got a checkbox labelled ���Mastodon��� that sends a copy of a note to my Mastodon account.

When I publish a blog post like the one you���re reading now here on my journal, there���s yet another checkbox that says ���Medium���. Toggling that checkbox sends a copy of my post to my page on Ev���s blog.

At least it used to. At some point that stopped working too. I was going to start debugging my code, but when I went to the documentation for the Medium API, I saw this:

This repository has been archived by the owner on Mar 2, 2023. It is now read-only.

I guessed I missed the memo. I guess Medium also missed the memo, because developers.medium.com is still live. It proudly proclaims:

Medium���s Publishing API makes it easy for you to plug into the Medium network, create your content on Medium from anywhere you write, and expand your audience and your influence.

Not a word of that is accurate.

That page also has a link to the Medium engineering blog. Surely the announcement of the API deprecation would be published there?

Crickets.

Moving on���

I have an account on Bluesky. I don���t know why.

I was idly wondering about sending copies of my notes there when I came across a straightforward solution: micro.blog.

That���s yet another place where I have an account. They make syndication very straightfoward. You can go to your account and point to a feed from your own website.

That���s it. Syndication enabled.

It gets better. Micro.blog can also cross-post to other services. One of those services is Bluesky. I gave permission to micro.blog to syndicate to Bluesky so now my notes show up there too.

It���s like dominoes falling: I post something on my website which updates my RSS feed which gets picked up by micro.blog which passes it on to Bluesky.

I noticed that one of the other services that micro.blog can post to is Medium. Hmmm ���would that still work given the abandonment of the API?

I gave permission to micro.blog to cross-post to Medium when my feed of blog posts is updated. It seems to have worked!

We���ll see how long it lasts. We���ll see how long any of them last. Today���s social media darlings are tomorrow���s Friendster and MySpace.

When the current crop of services wither and die, my own website will still remain in full bloom.