Venkatram thoroughly — and entertainingly — rounds up the responses to his indieweb carnival question …where do you see the IndieWeb in 2030, just five short years from now?
In it he discusses my post Defining the indieweb for 2026.
I didn’t get round to actually answering the question in December — banging out three longish posts in two days was always a little ambitious — but I will try and complete the triptych this weekend. Unfortunately, I’m back at work tomorrow, and we’re playing Oxford this afternoon.
Anyway, Venkatram wryly notes that despite my claim that trying to recreate social media on websites through protocols and processes such as POSSE and webmentions is no longer necessary
I did in fact ping him a notification using a… webmention 😀
I guess I should make it clear that I don’t think you need webmentions or POSSE in order to try and recreate the mechanics of social media on websites — and in fact it’s better not to do this. They can make your posting and pinging life a little more convenient, though.
For example, I linked to 29 other sites in my last blog post, and posted a link to the article from my fediverse account, along with a summary. Echofeed automates sending webmentions to any external site I reference in a post, and will toot the link from my Mastodon account when I publish. I could do both of these things manually by sending emails or just writing a new toot, but Echofeed saves a bit of effort. And I’ll be honest, it’s a nice feeling when a system you’ve hooked up actually works.
However, I wouldn’t use webmentions and POSSE to post every waking thought and reaction to my website before syndicating them to Mastodon, and then pull in all the responses to my site. Apart from the effort involved, my site is something entirely different from social media, and all the better for not recreating the attention economy of likes, boosts, follower counts and responses. Also, who wants to feed the man all that data?
There’s value in extricating our blogs from the gruesome mechanics of social media, such as publishing likes and boosts. I have an ambivalent enough relationship with my fediverse account as it is.
Anyway, it’s New Years Day. If you’re reading this, thank you, and have a safe, fulfilling 2026 x