You may have heard of Manton Reece's service called Micro.blog, a new type of social network.

In the past weeks I've seen and heard a few comments about how it's hard to describe what the service is and how to best convey the message to the general public as it ramps up to a public release.

Instead of trying to explain it in a way to describe the service I thought I would write what the service is for me.

I own my content

This is a no brainer really. Too many times have I loaded up Twitter and posted away. If that service went away tomorrow, I would loose all my content and would have to think really hard how to retain it. Yes, I’m aware of the content export but that is not my point. Now I’m ultimately in control. I can choose what to display on my site, how my site looks and not be too concerned on my follower count or noise. I am a real person, writing real content and putting my very own name on it… on my site!

The beauty with Micro.blog is that you write on your very own site first. Just like the old days when more people actually blogged. If you didn’t have a site, you can create one with the service. It’s easy and fast.

On top, if you so choose, you can syndicate your own original posts to Twitter or Facebook. I personally syndicate to Twitter, although I’m probably going to stop that soon and be done with it. Probably will write a post about this soon enough, ha!

Knowing I own my content and posting on my site, which I use to showcase what I do, makes me think before I just fire away with random crap. It’s easy to hammer away on a social network as that timeline just keeps on going, your post forgotten in infinity.

Quality content (well, you know what I mean), on my own site, which I own!

Motivation to keep writing

I’m not a great writer, just look at what I just wrote, but Micro.blog has motivated to keep writing because I’m finding people on there with similar motivation. Somehow put off to write more but just pushing themselves to write just for the sake of writing. True, I was super scared in the past when I wrote a blog post, but Micro.blog just showed me how many people actually write! I was used to Twitter… with noiseless noise. What I saw was great content written by many individuals. It really opened my eyes.

With writing on my own site and, hopefully, improving my style as I grow I hope that one day I can look at it all and see where this stepping stone has taken me.

Micro.blog pulls in the feed from this site, posts this on the service and then syndicates this. I don’t have to think about it. I just write the post and off it goes.

I hope in the long term I write more and more on the big stuff and the little stuff. I am no longer attached to the idea of people heavily judging what I write. Heck, I don’t even track any visitors on the site. I just write to write… just like this sentence. I write for myself and only for myself. If someone likes what I write, then that’s an added bonus.

A stepping stone to an archive of my life

Yes, I could just write and keep improving my site… and then in a few years go back and look through what I was doing all my life. Easy to say but actually really hard to execute.

I looked at my site many times over the years, regretting certain decisions and actually not writing anything for a very long time. I was, however, quite active on Twitter for a very long time. Posting there, giving my 140 characters of thoughts… good and bad.

In December of last year, 2016, I decided to not post to Twitter anymore. Eventually taking an archive of all tweets and then deleting them from Twitter. I had grand plans to use this archive and add them, somehow, to my site. That archive still lives on iCloud Drive.

Micro.blog had a successful Kickstarter, which I unfortunately didn’t back. That was entirely my fault! Wish I did. Listening to Manton on CoreInt and his own podcast really got me thinking.

What is a personal website? Is it a place to advertise yourself and your products? Or is it just for yourself…

For me, it is actually both.

Later this year I finally got my invite through for Micro.blog. Just logging in, seeing the simplicity and the really amazing community of people, I knew this was something special. This ultimately made me rethink my entire site and what I want to do with it. Not only that, it also enabled my deep unconscious mind to come forward in what I think a personal website should be.

For me, your very own site, should be an archive to your very own life. Like a photo album of the past that you keep around. I hope that in many years to come, I can look at my site and go through the ups and downs I went through in my lifespan.

I hope this site will outlive me, somehow, in an archive. I only know how to write software, make websites and fly shiny metal things in the air… I will never create buildings or monuments.

Wherever the digital world goes to, I hope when I retire I can look back at it all here on my very own website.

Micro.blog was a huge contributing factor to this idea and I thank Manton for creating this for everyone. Without it, my website would probably still collect dust… with nothing to show come my retirement. What can I show my daughter when she's older... I don't write books nor do I have a biography that she can pick up at the book store.

Closing thoughts

I highly recommend you check out Micro.blog. Even if you are a heavy user of Twitter or Facebook. You will be surprised at the community you will find here. Even if you don’t take part, I think Manton has really created something special and I hope the idea of owning your own content will get into more and more peoples minds. Too many big companies offer you easy and free services to extract everything that they can from you to make millions and billons of dollars with advertisers and third parties.

Micro.blog is new and different and with a, hopefully, sustainable business model it will be around for a very very very long time. And if the worst would happen… which I hope it NEVER EVER does, you will still have your very own content! Nothing lost in a service which you invested a lot of time in. Now that is truly special.

I hope we can go back to the good old days where many people blogged quality content. This is a step in the right direction. I hope also that I can make a small impact with driving this forward by keeping to write right here.

Thank you Manton and team for creating Micro.blog. It changed my life!