Inboxes, feeds, articles, notes

Once more into the void. It's time for your weekly update on all things ActivityPub and fur. We've been busy, so this is a fun one!

Last week we celebrated a successful implementation of message queues running production — a significant milestone for our ability to run ActivityPub for Ghost at scale. This, evidently (there were only 3 comments), excited pretty much nobody. Queues just aren't very fun!

Despite their lacklustre appeal in the context of the newsletter, though, the queue implementation is continuing to work well behind the scenes. Our servers are much happier now than they were previously.

This week, we're getting back to some more juicy updates around short-form and long-form content in the Fediverse.

What's new with ActivityPub?

For the past few months we've been testing two different views for the ActivityPub client app inside Ghost: An inbox, and a feed. We've been building things, so far, with the idea of a "social RSS reader" in mind — and we weren't sure which layout would best suit ActivityPub content. So we shipped both, to try them out and see how they feel.

Having used and tested this for a while now, we observed that the type of content being consumed has a big impact on which view feels most suitable — and each has upsides and downsides.

The inbox view works great for long-form content, providing a fast way to scan titles and decide what to click on to read a full post. But it doesn't work well for short-form content, which may just be a single image with no title or text. Or a post with just a few words and nothing else.

The feed view, on the other hand, works great for short-form content. It's easy to scan through bite-sized updates in a variety of formats. On the other hand, long-form content is harder to find among all the other updates.

So, we're trying something new: Separating these views into two separate screens, for separate types of content. The inbox screen will show long-form content (Articles) from people you follow, while the feed screen will show all other content types - which are mostly short-form.

This makes it a bit easier to decide where to go in the app based on the type of content you're looking for. Just want to see what's new from the people you follow for a few minutes? Check the feed. Just sat down with a cup of coffee, ready to read some of your favourite author's latest articles? Your inbox awaits.

Oh, also, if you want to share your own short-form update without publishing a whole post on your Ghost website — you can do that, too.

So, now there's a way to consume different types of content, and publish different types of content. When you've got a big idea to share, the full Ghost editor is at your disposal. When you just have a quick thought to share with your subscribers, you can post a short update directly on your feed.

Each will be sent out with ActivityPub, and will show up wherever people follow you across the Fediverse.

Will this concept definitely be useful? We're not sure! It's an experiment.

We're excited to try it out for the next few weeks alongside our beta testers, and see how it feels. So far, it seems to have a lot of potential.

Speaking of beta testers, we just sent out another round of beta invitations. We'll continue to add more people each week unless anything goes wrong, so keep an eye on your inboxes!