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Micro.blog's Amazing New Reply Feature

Both Micro.blog, and the Fediverse at large, sometimes feel like they’re just a few puzzle pieces away from being really great. And recently, Micro.blog added one of those pieces!

Because, you could already follow my blog, via the username @havn@micro.blog, on things like Mastodon. And if you saw one of my posts on your timeline, you could comment on it directly. However, it was a bit difficult to comment on it from the website here. But look at this beautiful piece as the bottom of my posts now:

The comment section, where I can omment by signing into Mastodon, Bluesky or Micro.blog
The text field unlocks, and it says I can add a comment as the user I logged in as.

And when you click through one of the links, you get sent back to the post and can add your comment.

If you comment with Bluesky, the comment won’t be copied and visible over there, but it will be visible on the conversation under the post on Micro.blog. What I don’t know, is if it will be visible under the same post if found via Mastodon or other ActivityPub services.

Oh, and they also added the ability to curate comments under a post. Well done!

The next piece I think is needed, is better linking to a Micro.blog post on Mastodon. Here’s a blog post of mine, viewed via Mastodon:

The post is a link to the article 'Why I use Fastmail', and I can hit reply, boost or favourite.

Hitting the circled button, and replying to that post (still on Mastodon), is a way to comment on the blog post. The thing is, to actually get to that button you have to follow the user and get it on your timeline, or click into the profile and fine the post. There is absolutely not way to link to the “place” where that button is. The reason is that if I share the “post” from the image above, I get the link directly to the blog post, so like https://havn.blog/blog-post. But if you click on that link, you obviously go straight to the web!

So I would think what’s needed is something like having a separate type of link, like https://micro.blog/havn/blog-post-ap, that would be a link to the post in the image. And making this link a Micro.blog URL would maybe make it easier for Mastodon apps (etc.) to recognise that they can open the link. Not sure this is the best solution, but I do think a solution is needed.