I dig Micro.blog for the way it helps me fight against dopamine driven social media norms by not showing me likes, follower counts, retweet numbers, views, etc. I post something and it gets published and that’s it. No checking later to see how many people liked it or reposted it. That’s a good thing for my vanity.

But I do find it misses out on some of the benefits of social media like knowing someone is actually a mutual friend—in the social media sense at least—because they follow you back and aren’t just replying randomly to posts of yours they come across. And the way that the Mac app doesn’t—as far as I can tell—have any way to get notified of replies or badge the app when you have a reply. I forget to check the Mentions tab for days or weeks and suddenly realize there’s been replies to my posts on Micro.blog. (I think the Micro.blog iOS version allows for notifications and badges?)

For me, all of this has nothing to do with “business” branding, marketing, or networking with potential clients, and everything to do with making connections with interesting people in different parts of the world. Learning their stories and how their experiences have shaped them in ways that might help me learn more about the world and myself.

I already have a proper blog to post longer thoughts on where I don’t have any clue who might be reading it, I kind of want a bit more social on a service like Micro.blog. But I get why for others who use it as their blog first, social connections second, that might not be as much of a priority.

Having used Mastodon and Bluesky for a few years now, I’ve come to appreciate their balance of a feed that’s not based on any algorithm other than who I choose to follow, while still letting me peek at who is actually following me that I might want to follow back (and vice versa).

Ultimately I do like having the ability to post from Micro.blog’s Mac app to social media, and while they’re are other options out there now, Microblog serves that purpose for me just fine so I don’t really need to switch services for that purpose.

Plus there are starting to be more people replying to my posts on Micro.blog as well as me replying to their posts, and I’d hate to lose whatever connections might be there that I’m not aware of.