I found it surprisingly hard to find live examples of sites running this.<p>The directory at <a href="https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/we-are-twtxt" rel="nofollow">https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/we-are-twtxt</a> gave me an error, but I found it in the Internet Archive (19th September 2024):<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240919022045/https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/we-are-twtxt/src/branch/master/we-are-twtxt.txt" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20240919022045/https://git.mills...</a><p>Here's a live example from that list: <a href="https://niplav.site/twtxt.txt" rel="nofollow">https://niplav.site/twtxt.txt</a> - and that one shows ones its following, this one has recent posts (from December 2024): <a href="https://txt.sour.is/user/xuu/twtxt.txt" rel="nofollow">https://txt.sour.is/user/xuu/twtxt.txt</a><p>The last commit to <a href="https://github.com/buckket/twtxt/commits/master/">https://github.com/buckket/twtxt/commits/master/</a> is October 2023, so I don't think this project is 100% thriving at the moment.<p>Update: Aha! Found <a href="https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/registry.html" rel="nofollow">https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/registry.html</a> and via it <a href="https://registry.twtxt.org/api/plain/tweets" rel="nofollow">https://registry.twtxt.org/api/plain/tweets</a> which shows some recent content across the network.<p>Also <a href="https://registry.twtxt.org/api/plain/users" rel="nofollow">https://registry.twtxt.org/api/plain/users</a> looks to be a list of users, though I couldn't figure out how to paginate it (using ?page=3 doesn't seem to work, despite that being listed on the <a href="https://registry.twtxt.org/swagger-ui/" rel="nofollow">https://registry.twtxt.org/swagger-ui/</a> page)
Related. Others?<p><i>A Decentralised Social Network</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33513022">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33513022</a> - Nov 2022 (1 comment)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25246533">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25246533</a> (Nov 2020)<p><i>Twtxt Is a Self-Hosted, Twitter-Like Decentralised MicroBlogging Platform</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242996">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242996</a> - Nov 2020 (27 comments)<p><i>Show HN: Twtxt v0.0.7 Your self-hosted, decentralised Twitter -like</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23945300">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23945300</a> - July 2020 (7 comments)<p><i>Twtxt.net – Attempting to respark the twtxt community</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23892491">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23892491</a> - July 2020 (1 comment)<p><i>Twtxt is a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23507640">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23507640</a> - June 2020 (1 comment)<p><i>Twtxt is a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312756">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312756</a> - May 2020 (1 comment)<p><i>Show HN: Txtnish – a client for the microblogging platform twtxt</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13742949">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13742949</a> - Feb 2017 (4 comments)<p><i>Show HN: htwtxt – hosted twtxt server (written in Go)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11091592">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11091592</a> - Feb 2016 (2 comments)<p><i>Show HN: Twtxt – Decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043502">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043502</a> - Feb 2016 (65 comments)
I was using it for years before moving to Mastodon, then Nostr.<p>It did work rather well, is easy to code for, and I still have people pulling from my twtxt file, but it does get a bit tiresome managing follows etc with the clumsy apps.<p>And not having a decent mobile app made it less fun to use on what for me is social media's primary use case - while on the loo hahaha.
It's quite buggy. Any minor change from the norm (config directory, txt file directory) seemed to break it. Finally I went with the standards and it still had trouble. `twtxt following` gives you errors. At first I thought it was because I wasn't following anyone, even though I chose to follow the twtxt news feed, but I never got rid of the error. I got errors about "feed not available" even though the txt files were there (maybe version differences?)<p>It sounds kinda interesting, honestly, but I give up.
The Twtxt/Yarn community is larger than you think. As the founder of Yarn.social[1] (which itself uses the Twtxt spec and extensions[2]) and operator of the "flagship" instance twtxt.net[3] I often interact with around ~70 folks (_not including news feeds_).<p>[1]: <a href="https://yarn.social" rel="nofollow">https://yarn.social</a>
[2]: <a href="https://twtxt.net" rel="nofollow">https://twtxt.net</a>
[3]: <a href="https://twtxt.net" rel="nofollow">https://twtxt.net</a>
I will never understand why all these minimalist content publishing systems pretend that visual imagery is unnecessary.<p>Humans have expressed themselves in images long before they have expressed themselves in text.<p>Any system that forces humans to express themselves purely in ASCII, monospace, and monochrome is crude and borderline disrespectful towards human expression.<p>It made sense in 1983, when the technology to power these expressions was not prevalent. But why do this today? I know they exist, but who are the people who confine themselves this way? Is it acknowledged as an act of self-discipline or self-restraint? Some sort of an artistic statement? What is the process through which one arrives at "I will commit to this system, and always only communicate in written speech, laid out in uniform monochromatic typographic format. I will walk into these constraints voluntarily."<p>Any medieval monk writing manuscripts, any ancient Greek or Roman or Egyptian or Chinese capturing history and literature on parchments would have gasped at such a thought.
nostr is the hackers microblog. Just sign things and relay them:<p><a href="https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md">https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42489954">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42489954</a>
for another smolweb social network, check bubble running on gemini.<p><a href="http://portal.mozz.us/gemini/git.skyjake.fi/bubble/main/" rel="nofollow">http://portal.mozz.us/gemini/git.skyjake.fi/bubble/main/</a><p><a href="http://portal.mozz.us/spartan/hitchhiker-linux.org/gemlog/on_bubble_centralization_and_federation.gmi" rel="nofollow">http://portal.mozz.us/spartan/hitchhiker-linux.org/gemlog/on...</a><p>the last url needs a gemini client to view.
surprisingly bubble looks a bit like hackernews and has support for moderation<p>"Discussion forums, microblogging, and Git issue tracking for the Gemini community. You only need a Gemini client to participate. Welcome!"<p>gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/Bubble
Simon Willison has one of the more prolific microblogs going and just did a meta review on his approach including the mechanics (surprise surprise it's Django). Could be of interest to anyone double clicking this thread.<p>My approach to running a link blog
22nd December 2024<p><a href="https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/" rel="nofollow">https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/</a>
I built a very (very) similar tool called <i>terss</i> (for "terse" and "RSS") years ago in Bash on top of RSS feeds (using core-utils and more-utils — in particular for 2xml and xml2) for interoperability because it made the whole thing more easy to produce and consume with other tools. I'll try to find if I still have it around somewhere :).<p>UPDATE: here it is: <a href="https://code.up8.edu/pablo/myutils/-/blob/master/terss" rel="nofollow">https://code.up8.edu/pablo/myutils/-/blob/master/terss</a>
Not a bad idea, light enough to implement a telegram bot everyone can use or email or maybe a bitlbee plugin so you can have a twtxt channel.<p>But, what is it? can you PM someone? participate in a conversation? or is it just that, a microblog? Usability wise what will you do? keep a client running that always checks if new blogs have happened over, how many followers? I'm currently following 500 people, that's 500 connections if this takes off.<p>It would be nice if an rss client supported it, until then ehh
This is literally just a shared text file with buzz words thrown in the title. You could achieve the same thing with a Google Drive link to a text file.
What problem is this solving? Not a criticism, just genuinely curious. On X, I can follow hackers, I can block/mute and curate as I want. Just not sure who asked for this.
perhaps someone can implement it in the bluesky pds as an additional feature <a href="https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds">https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds</a> put caddy in front of it for brotli compression so it serves fast on 1k2 links