Pine.blog now supports podcasts! If you follow a podcast using Pine.blog, you’ll now be able to listen to the podcast directly from your timeline! This feature should roll out to the iOS app with the next update, so for now it’s only available when using Pine.blog from the Web.

That said, Pine.blog now also supports video podcasts! Video podcasts are normally excluded from lots of podcasting apps, but Pine.blog does plan to fully support them. Like with audio podcast support, video isn’t available on iOS just yet, but it’s coming.

Other Reading Improvements

As an additional bonus, your timelines now have a few more buttons and levers to make it easier to catch up on your feeds. You can now expand and collapse all posts in a timeline and you can finally re-order your timelines 🎉 however you want using the arrows next to the title of the timeline.

Blogs come in all shapes, formats, and sizes and that diversity is part of what makes blogging great. As of today, no matter what kind of blog you have, Pine.blog can help you make it more interactive than ever!

If you’re a Premium subscriber and you have a blog on WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace, etc, or even a custom site you built, you now use Pine.blog to receive mentions on your site’s behalf. This means you’ll get all the benefits of using your own site, but you’ll still be able to see what people are saying about your site from within Pine.blog! If you use WordPress, or you have a hosted blog on Pine.blog, you can even reply to those mentions!

Adding Cross-Site Mentions to your site is really easy. You can find instructions on how to do so in your Account Page.

Cross-Site mentions are yet another way that Pine.blog is trying to push us towards the Open and Indie Web future! No matter where you blog you can get all the interactivity of Webmentions and cross-site replies.

Blogs can and should be the social network of the future, and Pine.blog is here to help make that better world a reality.

Today is a very special day; one that’s been in the works for a long time. I hope everyone enjoys the truckload of new features that are being rolled out.

The Social Web

Today, Pine.blog joins the Social Web as a full-fledged member!

Blogs are, traditionally, a one-way medium. Bloggers can post and share their thoughts with the world but readers often don’t have an easy way to respond to or comment on the stuff they read. Typically, blogs have either moderated comment sections (which force readers to post their thoughts on someone else’s site and not their own) or the reader will need to reply via email.

This lack of interactivity was one of the driving forces that caused blogging and blogs to fade and facilitated the rise of more interactive, easier to use, and less cumbersome Social Networks. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc replying to a post was a button click away.

With the latest version of Pine.blog, one-click replies have arrived on the Open Web. Bloggers on Pine.blog now have the ability to reply to posts in their timelines, anything in the Feed Directory, and even to other replies!

When you reply to a post, Pine.blog uses Webmentions to let the recipient know you’ve responded to them, and if they respond back, you’ll see their response in your Mentions as well as on the post they responded to. All blogs on Pine.blog automatically have a new Replies section so that your conversations don’t crowd out your normal posts.

The Feed Directory

There’s been a few changes to the Feed Directory with this release as well. Aside from some UI tweaks to the Tag Lists, there’s been quite a few changes to the way sites and feeds are parsed and default feeds are determined, and Publishers adding their site to the Directory, you’ll now receive an email when your site is completely imported.

Subscribing to a new feed or site will now also cause the site’s information to populate in the Feed Directory more quickly. This should fix the issue where some feeds or sites would look unpopulated for a while before fully being added to the Directory.

Hosted Blogs

Aside from all of the goodness with Replies, Hosted blogs are getting a number of substantial improvements. First off, they now work without Javascript 🎉 This change also means that your blog should load a bit faster even with Javascript enabled. In addition, visitors can now see the comments, mentions, and replies that are sent to your blog (this behavior is configurable in your account settings).

Notes on Pine.blog for iOS

Currently, a new version of Pine.blog for iOS is still in the works. It became evident recently that there needed to be quite a bit of tweaking done to get the app ready for all of these new features. A new version of the app should be out in the coming weeks.

I’d love to know what you think of these new features. And if you have thoughts, let me know!

It’s time, not only to take back the web from the giants, but to make it better than it’s ever been before. We can make a web that works for all of us, that promotes our values, that doesn’t spread hate and misinformation, that is good for our society, and that encourages us to be the best we can be.

This is why I build Pine.blog: because this is the web I want, and because it’s the one we deserve.

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Podcasts have so far avoided the fate of blogs and video and remained true to their roots. In no small way, the openness of the iTunes Podcast directory has had a huge impact on the fate of podcasts as a medium. Apple provides a centralized directory that other users, clients, and services can search freely, all while the shows themselves remain open and decentralized. This is the future of blogging.

Pine.blog’s Search Directory has an API that’s free to use. Other apps are encouraged to add blog search to their feed reader or blog-based applications and to help promote the open-ness of the Web We Want.

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Writing on the Web doesn’t have to become like video: trapped on a single platform. Blogs are a great way to share thoughts, reviews, opinions, essays, quick snippets, photos, and more. And blogging was once a world open to anyone. We can take that world back.

Pine.blog makes it easy to start a blog and get started writing on the web on a site you control. No setting up servers or giving all your data to Facebook. On Pine.blog anyone can follow your writing, whether they use Pine.blog or not, and you can reply to, comment on, and like other posts from across the web.

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There’s a new, bright future for social media, and Pine.blog is just one piece. Open Social Networks like Pine.blog come in all shapes and sizes, and they can all talk to each other. Whether you’re using Pine.blog, Mastodon, WordPress, Micro.blog or something else, you should be able to talk with, share, and follow everyone else in that network. In this way, Pine.blog uses the Web itself as a Social Network.

With Open Social Networks, users are always in control. If you don’t like that a service shows you ads, or charges a fee, or tracks your clicks, you can move to another service that doesn’t and you don’t have to lose your followers, your timelines, or your posts.

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The Web Used to be Different. It Used to Put People First.

Not misinformation or hate or algorithms, but people. We deserve that web again and we can make it better than it’s ever been.

For years, closed social networks like Facebook and Twitter have been swallowing the web and all of the promises it once held. Writing on the web is now held hostage by the giants of social media. They control what we see, who gets attention, and what businesses succeed or fail.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Pine.blog is a small step towards a brighter future for the web.

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Pine.blog now supports Webmentions to let other sites know when you’ve liked their posts or comments on their work! Pine.blog users can also receive Webmentions as comments and likes!

Replies are in the works!

Webmentions are a technology that allows people who use Pine.blog or another compatible platform (i.e. WordPress, Blogger, Micro.blog, Mastodon, etc) to like, comment on, and reply to each others posts, even across platforms. Think of it like being able to like a photo from Instagram on Twitter.

Check out the details in the Pine.blog Knowledge Base

You can now upload images to Pine.blog and embed them in your posts. Just click on the 📋 icon to copy the embed code and paste it into your post. Browse and upload images by clicking on Images in the username dropdown.

Image uploading is coming to Pine.blog for iOS soon, along with a bunch of other features.

Blogrolls are an old idea. They originated back with the original blogs back in the early aughts. The idea was simple: bloggers wanted to point their readers towards other blogs they liked. It was a recommendation system built on people and on trust. Blogrolls spread far and wide helping readers and bloggers discover and link to each other in a meaningful way.

In an effort to re-kindle some of the old ideas that made blogging so great in the old days, Pine.blog now supports adding a blogroll to your blog with 1-click! Simply enable the blogroll for your blog in your account settings, and you’re done!

Blogrolls are automatically generated based on the most recent sites you’ve recommended (click the ⭐️ icon to recommend a site). This means it’s super easy to get started with a blogroll and it’s also easy to curate your blogroll.

The wait is finally over: Pine.blog users can now start their own blog! Blogs are designed to be lighting fast and easy to use, and there’s also a brand new editor and full drafts support. With this update, Pine.blog way more than just a feed reader, it’s a way to stay updated and to share your thoughts with everyone.

All blogs have built-in RSS and JSON feeds so anyone, even if they don’t use Pine.blog, can follow what you post, and all blogs are automatically added to the Feed Directory so that other Pine.blog users can find your site quickly and easily.

The combination of a blog… and a good Feed Reader can provide nearly all of the features people require from a modern social network… On Facebook or Twitter you can sign up and be posting in minutes, you can easily find other things to follow, and you can easily see what others are saying. Typical Feed Readers solve only one of these problems. – Blogging has an Image Problem

Pine.blog for iOS has been updated and you should see it in the App Store shortly.

Give Pine.blog a shot and see how social the open web can be.