They say conversation is the music of the mind

Friends, pugs, we have reached a milestone of milestones. Today's update is a good one, and we're buzzing with excitement from the past few weeks of progress!

Last week, we had a revelatory moment when we saw for the first time that many of you have been responding to these newsletters from the Fediverse — and we just didn't even know that was happening until we finished building support for ingesting replies into Ghost.

There was just one problem. We couldn't reply back!

So many questions, so little ability to respond.

What's new with ActivityPub?

This week, all that changes. We've just about got the first version of outbound replies working. That means that the demo in this week's newsletter is two-fold. Not only can we show you our customary little animated screencast of the thing in action.

No. In fact we can actually live demo this with you.

If you receive this newsletter via the Fediverse this week and send a reply, we'll be able to reply back to you. A real, honest-to-pug, 2-way conversation.

The astute amongst you will note that, as of this week, Ghost now has more Fediverse functionality than Threads — and look, it's not a competition. But if it were, we'd be winning. So. Take that for what you will.

(Just kidding Threads team, you guys are great - pls keep up the good work)

The reality is, folks, we are getting closer and closer to starting up a private beta and getting some of you really using this thing.

We're talking weeks now, not months.

Starting in next week's newsletter, we're going to begin sharing some details of how the beta will work, and how it'll be rolling out, so you have some idea of what to expect as we progress into the next stage of the project.

Also please keep in mind that we're again approaching the end of a quarter, and must justify our continued work to internal stakeholders who, for reasons we still don't totally understand and have stopped asking about, measure our competence exclusively by the amount of engagement this newsletter gets.

So, you know, if you wouldn't mind boosting our KPI a little below, or via Fediverse replies, we intend to print them all out and fax them to the board meeting.