Notices by Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social), page 9

@_elena Congrats! Looking forward to your writeup of the process.

@_elena It is neat :) I only just joined Surf, and I hate to talk about something that is still closed beta, but I am looking forward to everyone getting access to this.

Test: Hi this is a post from Surf, Flipboard’s cool new app.

What does the Open Web mean to me as we head into 2025? The ability to follow (and see posts from!) the people I want to connect with, no matter if they’re on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, whatever. Conversely, the ability to TUNE OUT the people I no longer want to hear from (Musk, Mullenweg, people who just post political stuff, etc). That’s the dream, for me at least. Build bridges to connect with your tribe, ignore the self-important people who think they can control you or “the discourse.”

“We build bridges, not walls” 🌁 ❤️ I spoke to @quillmatiq and @snarfed.org about the launch of the 'A New Social' org, and how it can help the #OpenWeb grow in 2025. We also discuss goals for Bridgy Fed as we head into the new year. https://thenewstack.io/bridge-building-the-state-of-the-open-web-heading-into-2025/ #Fediverse

Thought for the night: is it possible to have a successful indie website/newsletter that’s FOR something and not anti-something. Many of the successful indie tech sites/newsletters I can think of are anti-blockchain, anti-AI, anti-bigtech, etc. U may hate Web 2.0, but at least we were FOR something.

Ev Williams ( @ev ) is back with a new startup. As someone of the same vintage as him, I can relate to this:

“Mr. Williams said he decided Mozi was worth building after reflecting on the importance of relationships. Looking back, he said, “everything that had gone really well, even in work, was about relationships, and everything that went poorly was mismanaging relationships.””

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/technology/ev-williams-twitter-medium-mozi.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hU4.vPLI.Fif9lmrZOIZi&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare (gift link)

@ev Slideshare founders have also launched a new thing. Rashmi Sinha:

“Twitter launched in early 2006, SlideShare in late 2006.

These are what I would call nostalgia builds. An effort to capture the social web that was, for a brief ephemeral moment. And then it became successful, so successful that we lost what we built with the social web.

We are afraid of failure and losing the things we care about. Sometimes, success makes you lose the thing you care about.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rashmisinha_ev-williams-twitter-and-medium-founder-activity-7273409486915039235-mE_e?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

If you all think JavaScript frameworks spit out horrendous code, try editing an epub file in Calibra (it’s XHTML). As well as dealing with mountains of span tags, it took me hours to track down the cause of a bug where numbers in my ebook were formatted differently from the text…the reason, it turned out: one of the meta files had an Arabic language setting! I only discovered this when I looked closer at the settings on my kindle. All part of the fun of being a self-published author :)

@evan @social I feel the same way about the BBC ( @BBCRD) , which also seems to have given up on its fediverse experiment. I remember BBC was an active early adopter in Web 2.0, which worked out well for them in the end. Same could apply here.

56 years ago! It all started here: It's December 9, 1968, and Douglas Engelbart is about to showcase the world’s first personal, networked, computer — as a live demo. It’s the computing equivalent of a high-wire trapeze act with no net. https://cybercultural.com/p/1968-the-mother-of-all-demos/ #ComputerHistory

MozillaCrunch? https://mastodon.social/@linuxiac/113599261613693627

@andypiper Not to mention, you cannot reply to Mastodon accounts from Threads yet — a rather crucial part of two-way web functionality.

Just to note that although Threads has enabled (mostly) two-way federation now, there are still restrictions and glitches. Eg in this screenshot from Threads, @andypiper links to his Mastodon account, but I couldn’t actually click on that link. Also, a commenter pointed out that Europe residents still cannot use Threads’ fediverse functionality. So while we should say congrats to Meta for finally turning 2-way on, it’s far from a full fediverse instance at this time.

@evan Almost there ;) They just need to enable replies…kinda crucial for a two-way web. But I’m certainly pleased they are moving forward again.

Well they’ve finally done it — you can now follow Mastodon users from Threads (with some restrictions; see screenshot). Easiest way to test this is to search for your Threads account here, like the latest post, then check back on Threads. Follow your Mastodon self from there. Once this gets 100% functionality, I will hopefully be able to start pointing Threads users to my Mastodon profile.

@_elena nice :) Looking forward to seeing mine soon.

Cool, love these fun social things. I haven’t checked on my computer yet, but Eugen says: “You'll get a notification in the web app when it's ready.” https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/113585943468420939

@evan @Gargron I will always defer to you @evan on technical matters of the fediverse. I'll just add that Meta has stated its goal is two-way federation...but it hasn't delivered that yet.

"Our vision is for Threads to enable communication between you and people on other servers we don’t own or control. This means that your Threads profile can be followed by people using different servers on the fediverse, and eventually, you’ll be able to follow them from Threads." https://help.instagram.com/169559812696339

@Gargron @evan well said Eugen. I replied at the same time, and removed Tim from the conversation (as he didn't ask to be in it...sorry Tim :))