Posted on

Sunlit 3.0 for iOS Released, Featuring New Post Editor and Improved Discovery Interface

Sunlit 3.0 was released this week and is now available in the App Store. The free photoblogging app is a companion app to the Micro.blog indie microblogging platform. Sunlit has some similarities to Instagram minus the deadweight of ads and algorithms. Users can follow each other, comment on posts, and timeline photos are displayed in chronological order.

“The idea is to get more people posting photos to their own blogs, whether that’s hosted on Micro.blog, WordPress.com, or a self-hosted WordPress,” Micro.blog creator Manton Reece said. Publishing to WordPress does not require any extra plugins, because the app uses the built-in XML-RPC support.

Sunlit uses Micro.blog’s infrastructure for the social aspect (replies and mentions). Users must be signed into a Micro.blog account (either paid or free) to view the timeline or reply to posts. In the current version, users are required to go to Micro.blog on the web to register first but Reece said his team is aiming to make this more seamless in the future so users can start using all the features in Sunlit right away.

“Some people use Micro.blog for their blog exclusively, and some people have a mix of a microblog or photoblog on Micro.blog, as well as a full blog on WordPress,” Reece said.

Sunlit also has support for following Tumblr photoblogs. In the app’s Discover tab, users can enter a Tumblr subdomain like “username.tumblr.com,” and then follow the blog even if the user is not on Sunlit.

“Micro.blog is based on blogs and IndieWeb standards so that it can integrate well with the rest of the web, not be walled off like a silo,” Reece said. “One aspect of this is that you can follow many blogs in Micro.blog even if the author of the blog hasn’t registered on Micro.blog yet, similar to how you can subscribe to blogs in a feed reader like NetNewsWire or Feedbin.”

Sunlit 3.0 has been redesigned with a new Discover interface and a faster, more flexible posting screen. Users can publish a quick photo or even a full blog post with text and photos uploaded to the users’ blog, along with the HTML layout for the post. This version also includes user search and support for mentions when replying to conversations.

Micro.blog is currently supporting the app’s development, and Reese said he has no plans to add any commercial upgrades into Sunlit.

“We support Sunlit as part of running Micro.blog,” he said. “Sunlit makes an existing Micro.blog subscription more useful, so it helps with the overall platform sustainability, even if not everyone using Sunlit is paying for a subscription. We hope that more people will sign up for a paid Micro.blog subscription, but it’s not required.”

Sunlit does not have an Android app but the teams would like to support Android in the future. The app is open source and available on GitHub under the MIT License.

“Because Sunlit for iOS is open source, this [Android support] might be something that comes from the community or it might be something we take the lead on. I personally have much more experience with iOS, so we started there.”

Posted on

Micro.blog Adds Tumblr Cross-Posting

Over the weekend, Micro.blog added Tumblr cross-posting to its service in response to Automattic’s acquisition of the company. Micro.blog users can now elect to have their blog posts automatically syndicated to Tumblr.

Although Tumblr is somewhat of a competitor to Micro.blog’s social networking and microblogging service, founder Manton Reece said he sees Tumblr as more of a social network:

I usually avoid adding blog hosting services to Micro.blog’s available cross-posting destinations. After all, if it’s a good blog host that I could recommend as your primary blog, why not just post everything there instead of using Micro.blog’s own blog hosting? But the more I’ve used Tumblr in the last couple of weeks, the more I think about Tumblr as a community first and a blog host second.

Micro.blog may bear some similarities to Tumblr but the service has an entirely different flavor. It has become an alternative watering hole for indie web enthusiasts with its support for Webmention and Micropub protocols. Many who use the service seem to already be convinced of the value of hosting a blog that is independent from the major social media silos.

Micro.blog already had several Tumblr-related features built in to the platform. Users can follow Tumblr blogs on Micro.blog by visiting the Discover feed and plugging in any Tumblr domain name. Micro.blog users can also add their own Tumblr feeds to their accounts so followers can see posts from both their main microblog and the Tumblr blog.

On a recent episode of the Core Intuition podcast titled “A Much Bigger Megaphone,” Reece and co-host Daniel Jalkut, the developer of MarsEdit, speculate on the future of Tumblr and discuss some key differences from Micro.blog’s service and social network. Micro.blog acts more as an aggregate of blogs from around the web, whereas Tumblr’s blogging aspect is limited to Tumblr accounts only.

Both networks aim to make blogging easier and seem to focus on shorter-style posts. However, Micro.blog is more of a social network for independent microbloggers who want to connect their content to a stream of blogs. Tumblr is a blogging service that has a symbiotic relationship with the communities its publishing capabilities enable. It has the potential to become the most important social network on the open web, given its active user base and Automattic’s commitment to independent publishing.

Both Reece and Jalkut said they were optimistic that Automattic’s acquisition of Tumblr will introduce more opportunities for both Micro.blog and MarsEdit, as the company’s influence makes it easier to market the value of owning your own blog. For a long time, Tumblr’s API hasn’t supported some of the key features of MarsEdit and Jlkut said he is hopeful that with Automattic at the helm the API may change to support the types of things his customers need.

In a post published shortly after the acquisition, Reece said he believes Tumblr has a lot of overlap with Micro.blog and views Automattic as having a “shared vision of the future that embraces content ownership, supports healthy communities, and deemphasizes massive social networks.” Those who value blogs and blogging are hopeful that Tumblr’s new ownership will rekindle some of the social magic that was present in the early days of the web but has since become more scarce.