μthosch

The above statement won’t surprise users of Micro.blog. However, there’s at least one scenario where the sharp distinction becomes blurred.

First, the basics

The central post format on Micro.blog is the post. Contrary to what the platform’s name might suggest, microblogging and long-form posts coexist on an equal basis. While the view for creating new posts is oriented toward microblogging, it still allows for long posts. A title field is available but doesn’t have to be used. The boundaries between these two sub-formats are fluid.

Published posts appear both in your own blog and in the timeline. The timeline displays not only your own posts but also those from users you follow.

There, you can respond to posts with replies. These appear in the timeline but not in your own blog.¹ Regarding length and formatting, replies don’t differ from posts.² Replies aren’t captured by the crossposting mechanism.

For editing or deleting posts and replies³, there are different methods, which I won’t go into here.

Thus, posts and replies differ significantly in handling and display.

Lost Posts

A few months ago, I wanted certain posts to appear only in the timeline but not in the (main) blog and not be crossposted to other services. I was thinking of posts like questions or bug reports directed at other users like @help or @manton.

An additional blog without crossposting seemed like a possible solution. The posts would then be stored and visible in this blog but wouldn’t appear in the main blog. As a premium subscriber, I had access to additional blogs, so I implemented the idea.

The result was confusing.

All created posts appeared in the timeline, but most didn’t show up in the corresponding blog. They disappeared upon publication.

To rule out a technical error when setting up the blog, I deleted and recreated the blog multiple times.

The solution took a long time to arrive…

When Posts Become Replies…

Eventually, I noticed that only posts starting with @user disappeared. Upon request, I learned that this was intentional behavior. In this case, a post is automatically converted into a reply, which no longer appears in the respective blog.

This only happens if the @user is present when publishing. If the post is edited afterward to include it, the post remains a post.

If you remove the @user when creating a reply in the timeline, it doesn’t change the behavior. A reply is created that remains linked to the referenced post.

My original goal could have been achieved without an additional blog because the posts would have automatically been converted into replies and thus wouldn’t appear in the blog.

The above behavior—like many details about Micro.blog—is undocumented.