Since Twitter/X has become a garbage site, and Facebook is only marginally better, I have been using Mastodon as my social media outlet. What follows is my workflow for sharing cool things with my rabid fanbase.
OK. My Federated Workflow. What does that mean? Well, it’s the process of finding an idea or item on the Internet that I would like to share, be it a blog post or other webpage, a video, a podcast, etc. Then, by using the tools of the Fediverse (most importantly the ActivityPub protocol), I re-publish, or syndicate it, everywhere. Or, at least to the places I feel are important. Unfortunately, those places are constantly changing. I think often of the fondness I had for Twitter back in the day, and now the utter sense of revulsion. Alright, enough about the past.
What is the future, and where does it all start? Most of the time it’s a website that I want to post about, and re-publish in several different places. I discover a website and determine that this would be really cool to share. Now, I could copy the webpage address and paste it into a new post on Mastodon, but I might like to put some polish on it, publish it, and then let it get sent automatically to multiple publishing destinations I choose. Not just Mastodon.
It all begins with a program called MarsEdit, which is a blog editor that you connect to a WordPress website (as well as Tumblr, Mastodon, and others). Included with the MarsEdit installation is a Safari extension, so when I’m viewing a website, I click on the MarsEdit toolbar button and a new document appears with the website and the link inserted the post.
(Editors note: I should say that you don’t have to start with an external editor like MarsEdit. You can begin with the standard WordPress editor. MarsEdit just provides one way to begin a new post while you’re on the page you want to blog about)
Then I can type in some additional information, add a relevant block quote, and it’s ready to post. I’ll choose a category for it. I have an InstaPost category for when I want to instantly share something. I’ll also grab an image to use as the featured image for a post. For these types of posts, I’m usually sending it to my microblog site, though I also send posts to AndHeBlogs. MarsEdit gives me the option to choose from whichever destinations have been set up. That’s the basic idea. Once I’ve got the post how I want it (I try to keep it fairly simple), I press the “Send to blog” button, and it will immediately go to my microblog (called MicroThoughts).
The next step is it automatically pings my Micro.blog website. The Micro.blog service receives the post after a short period of time (it can take several minutes – think RSS). Once it arrives at my Micro.blog site it then immediately distributes it to my other accounts – currently Mastodon, Tumblr, Threads, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Why? Ownership.
So WHY is this my workflow? What is happening in the background of posting my idea is complicated, and it’s magical that it works. However, aside from the clicking of a button in Safari and editing the post in MarsEdit, everything happens automatically when I hit publish. The reason why I don’t just go to Mastodon, or wherever, and paste a link is that I want to control the workflow and the archiving of my posts. If I posted to some place like, god forbid, Twitter or Facebook, then the control of the “original” thought rests with the Megacorp. Whereas, if I begin the post on my personal computer, it gets distributed to the destinations as “copies”. My blogs will always be the source for all my writing (such as it is), and there will be no question who owns it. I imagine there will be tweaks to the workflow going forward, like adding more services/destinations, but I only see it getting better.
This workflow follows the POSSE philosophy – Publish (on) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. You’re in control of your work. You’re in charge of ownership and distribution. You also control the connections, AND disconnections!
I have recently become aware, and a fan of, Molly White, who wrote lovingly about POSSE. Thanks to folks like her, and people like Dave Winer, there is hope that we can rediscover and reclaim the open web.
Featured image by Rolf van Root on Unsplash
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