Great article on #POSSE by David Pierce (@davidpierce@mastodon.social @pierce) @Verge:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon

Several key points of POSSE explained in the article:


First, post on your own site:

 “In a POSSE world, everybody owns a domain name, and everybody has a blog. (… a place on the internet where you post your stuff and others consume it.)”
 

Second, syndicate elsewhere, appropriately for each destination:

 “Then, your long blog post might be broken into chunks and posted as a thread on X and Mastodon and Threads. The whole thing might go to your Medium page and your Tumblr and your LinkedIn profile, too. If you post a photo, it might go straight to Instagram, and a vertical video would whoosh straight to TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. Your post appears natively on all of those platforms,”

You can use Bridgy Publish (https://brid.gy/) to POSSE to many destinations, and Bridgy Fed (https://fed.brid.gy/) to #federate to #Mastodon and other #fediverse destinations, directly from your site instead of posting a copy on yet another account on yet another server.


Third, and this is a key piece that distinguishes proper POSSE setups, with original post perma(short)links back to your posts on your domain:

 “typically with some kind of link back to your blog.”
 

All copies link to (your) home.

 "And your blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet."
 

You have power over your domain (name), not outside silos.


David embedded a screenshot of one of my posts, a reply post:


in which I posted a reply *on my own site*¹ to @Zeldman.com’s tweet (itself a reply to a POSSE copy of one of my posts), and POSSEd my reply to Twitter so it would thread with his reply.

This illustrates another important detail of a proper POSSE setup:

Fourth, post *replies* and other responses from your own site, whether to other #IndieWeb sites, or to others’s silo posts (tweets etc.).

Own your data means owning your replies as well.


David also noted several challenges and good questions about POSSE. Some of these have answers & established practices, others are areas of exploration. E.g.

 "The first is the social side of social media: what do you do with all the likes, replies, comments, and everything else that comes with your posts?"
 
The short answer is #backfeed: https://indieweb.org/backfeed

Backfeed is a concept I first wrote about as “reverse syndication”².

As you syndicate your posts out to #socialMedia silos, you reverse syndicate any responses there back to your original post.

Your site can do this with a service like #Bridgy, which uses the #Webmention standard to forward such silo responses back to your site, and #BridgyFed which does same for responses from Mastodon to your #federated posts.


David asked many other questions, which are deserving of their own posts to help answer, so I’ll leave you with just one more:

 "The most immediate question, though, is simply how to build a POSSE system that works."

The short answer is: just start³.

Even if you have to do it manually (until it hurts), even if you have to edit your posts on a static GitHub site (behind your domain name of course), and then copy & paste to your silo(s) of choice, just start.

By practicing POSSE, even manually, you will learn what aspects of POSSE & backfeed matter the most to you, what aspects actually involve reaching & responding to friends and others you care about.

By doing so you will naturally focus on setting up & making what you need, and you too can join the future of web publishing, today.

Questions? Join us in the chat: https://chat.indieweb.org/ (also on Discord, IRC, and Slack⁴)


This is day 46 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 45: https://tantek.com/2023/289/t1/bridgyfed-webmention-like-fediverse
→ 🔮


Post glossary:

backfeed / reverse syndication
  https://indieweb.org/backfeed
Bridgy
  https://brid.gy/
make what you need
  https://indieweb.org/make_what_you_need
manual (until it hurts)
  https://indieweb.org/manual_until_it_hurts
original post link
  https://indieweb.org/original_post_link
own your data
  https://indieweb.org/own_your_data
own your replies
  https://indieweb.org/own_your_replies
permalink
  https://indieweb.org/permalink
permashortlink
  https://indieweb.org/permashortlink
POSSE
  https://indieweb.org/POSSE
silo
  https://indieweb.org/silo
social media
  https://indieweb.org/social_media
static site
  https://indieweb.org/static_site
start
  https://indieweb.org/start
Webmention
  https://indieweb.org/Webmention


¹ https://tantek.com/2023/253/t2/
² https://tantek.com/2010/034/t2/diso-2-personal-domains-shortener-hatom-push-relmeauth
³ https://tantek.com/2023/001/t1/own-your-notes
⁴ https://indieweb.org/discuss