"Real-time sharing of short text messages and links — so-called “microblogging” — is the heart of social networks from LinkedIn to Twitter.

"Real-time sharing of short text messages and links — so-called “microblogging” — is the heart of social networks from LinkedIn to Twitter. But articles and blog posts, with finer details, deeper thought and more analysis, are a crucial part of what the Web is for..."

the term microblogging is confusing. it's a social news feed. what's unique here is the "boost". not just posts/links, but just add #ActivityPub and any media can go viral. we decide together what deserves attention. #SocialWeb

@wjmaggos

Sometimes, people think of new things in terms of old things.

Some other examples (in addition to micro-blogging) include:

• horseless carriage (for cars),
• iron horse (for locomotives)
• wireless phones (for mobile pocket computers),
• etc.

@wjmaggos "microblogging" is more about informality and semi-ephemerality, which comes from self-imposed length and formatting limits. the "boost" isn't unique to microblogging, and you don't need activitypub for that either. people share things all the time without activitypub. you could share *anything* with a link if only your software would let you. i could "boost" anything on the web but mastodon won't understand it except for an incredibly tiny subset of the web.

@trwnh

AP and the boost compose a new simple one-click standard to make anything go viral. it can be built into long articles and podcasts and video.

before other web/email standards and approaches, you could also do lots of things they then made easier etc. but it would be slower and more cumbersome. and when those were not yet popular, I'm sure some people said they never would be, give it up.

@wjmaggos i'm saying "one click boost" is not new and it's not unique to microblogging (and there's nothing limiting it to activitypub)