Rediscovering the Magic of the Blogosphere, with John O’Nolan and Matthias Pfefferle
Social networks were built on short posts designed for speed and scale. But what if the next era of the web was built for something deeper?
Two of the social web’s “longformers” are working on this. John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost, and Matthias Pfefferle, the developer behind the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, are at the forefront of integrating social features with blogs, newsletters, essays — anything that doesn’t fit in a box of 500 characters or less.
In this episode of Dot Social, they talk with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue about rediscovering the magic of the blogosphere; why formatting, identity, and interoperability are tricky problems to solve; and where writing belongs in the next chapter of the internet.
Highlights of this conversation:
1:24 Why should writers and bloggers care about this topic?
8:35 How the plugin has been received
12:15 Building social into blogs
17:35 Will this increase discovery?
20:15 Models for discovery
23:03 Tumblr in its heyday and status of integration
25:17 How they’re thinking about AT Proto
33:20 Thoughts on bridging
37:16 Core principles around integrating long-form content into protocol
44:06 Leveraging lessons from email?
46:16 Need for collaboration
49:10 Rough edges
52:50 New experiences
Mentioned or related to this episode:
- Julian Lam of Node BB nodebb.org/
- “Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status, with Citation Needed's Molly White” dot-social.simplecast.com/epis…
- “Steps Forward in Long-form Text” socialwebfoundation.org/2025/0…
🔎 You can find John at john.onolan.org/ and Matthias at pfefferle.dev/.
✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.
🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. about.surf.social/
Matthias Pfefferle
Webworker, podcaster and blogger, advocate of the #openweb and citizen of the @indieweb and the @fediverse, working on #activitypub & @IndieWeb for @WordPresspfefferle.dev
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in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •sigi714
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Seth Richards
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •USB Type-Steve
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •leberschnitzel
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •System Adminihater
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Billy O'Neal
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Kevin Beaumont
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Lord, Microsoft cancelled Zenimax Online Studios new MMO - that they'd moved Elder Scrolls Online developers over to recently (hence why there's little ESO content from now on).
They've also locked the devs out of Slack without actually telling them they're fired, so they're finding out online.
Dave 🐶
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Martin Boller
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Gary Parker
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Adrian Sanabria
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Simonoid
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Kevin Beaumont
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •> tells people laid off to talk to AI
13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Martin Boller
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Dave 🐶
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •mklovenotcyber
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Manuel Tejera
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •the fucking gall
I feel like punching that guy in the throat
Dr. Christopher Kunz
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Mathieu
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •That just cant' be real can it? How low self awareness can you have to write this kind of stuff?
This timeline just keeps on giving.
mbpaz
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Oggie
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •This really does seem like a lot of effort to get a few more people to use their liebot, but I guess they really need to get those numbers up!
In all seriousness, this is just...awful.
badambassador
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •waem
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Claudine C
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •fuzzyfuzzyfungus
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Has anyone gotten to work on the AICD-11 classification of personality disorders?
Apparently we already need it.
lucie digitální
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Arvīds Kokins
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •BeeCycling
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •cyber
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Phil
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •JaxxAI
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Kevin Beaumont
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •This guy ended up on BBC News, which MS considers a tier 0 media outlet 💀 bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckglzx…
If anybody wonders this isn’t the first gaff with MS staff using AI and thinking they work in marketing - eg one security person posted an AI generated picture of children working in a SOC, to show how good their services are. 😅
Xbox producer suggests laid-off staff use AI to deal with emotions
Charlotte Edwards (BBC News)Michael Weiss
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Alan Miller 🇺🇦
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Gytis Repečka
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Interpipes 💙
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Rairii
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •XCondE
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Chilly 🛡️
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •USB Type-Steve
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Gaëtan Perrault
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •this all sounds like MS is still amping up the "rent collection" portion of their business. It looks like they've accepted that they're done building a lot of new stuff. They need to sit around and get money without making new stuff for a while, to keep investors happy.
It's crummy for the workers involved. But I think we're going to see this with all of the big Tech firms for a couple more years.
Gavin
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Looks like they went all-in on slop and decided to cut humans to compensate and maintain its margins. Another needless, pointless loss of jobs for yet more utter garbage.
reuters.com/business/world-at-…
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •dude.
Their email to employees says “I recognize that these changes come at a time when we have more players, games, and gaming hours than ever before. Our platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger.”
So…“because we’re so successful, you’re all fired.” Did I get that right?
Joel Michael
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Hólmgeirr Draven
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •Ψ*Ψ
in reply to Kevin Beaumont • • •