My standard procedure is to read one book at a time. I spend all my reading time on that book, finish it, and move on. For whatever reason, in 2025, I started on three or four books. As a result, it took me until March 12 to finish my first book of the year. Oof.

Indie Microblogging is the work of Manton Reece, the founder of Micro.blog. Manton is a developer whose career has been spent on Mac and web technology products. Hard to believe, but eight years ago, Manton unveiled the first version of Micro.blog. I’ve been using it since near the beginning. This blog is #1576 on the platform.

The book is both highly technical and conceptual. Manton pulls back the curtain on the relatively simple lines of code that make blogs like this one run. He also talks about the evolution of blogs, the why of Micro.blog, and a vision for how the future of the internet should look.

The central premise is that the web is a better, more personal space, when it’s a network of countless personal blogs. Instead of content locked into a few websites (think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), people can post their thoughts, experiences, photos, video, and audio to their website, making it permanent. Every post you made to MySpace is gone forever; if you had posted it to your blog instead, it would still be accessible.

Micro.blog’s best feature is how it fuses together web-hosted blogs and a social network. The two features operate agnostic of each other, but together offer a powerful alternative. I use this website to share what I’m thinking about and doing with my close friends and family. If others enjoy it, that’s wonderful, but I don’t see my blog as a place to start a conversation with strangers. I use the well-written blog engine and completely ignore the social network. Manton’s design allows for the enforcement of guidelines on the social network, but freedom of expression on hosted blogs. This is the right approach.

The book reads a lot like Manton’s blog. It was a mixture of the technical, the practical, the political, and the cultural. Manton has a perspective, and as the author of his book, it was his prerogative to use it as the lens through which he understood and speaks about the important issues we face regarding social media. His arguments would’ve been stronger if they were presented with more balance in the examples, but his points were still discernible.

I enjoyed many of the ideas, and understanding the underpinnings of the system that I use to keep a running record of my daily life.

ISBN: 978-1737996552