Inkwell from Micro.blog helps grow the blogging community

One of my favourite parts of the blogging community is replies. Not comments, but replies on one blog to a post on another. Well thought out responses to well thought out points.

The conversation evolves with patience and async joy - a stark contrast to the fast, short retorts of social media.

Manton Reece of Micro.blog (where I host this blog) has recently added Inkwell to the service’s line-up of useful tools. It’s a pretty RSS reader which has thoughtful integrations with Micro.blog proper.

For example, I can highlight parts of a post, and compose a reply post right from there. I can save this as a draft to add to later when I have more thoughts.

There’s a nifty feature called “Fading” which can summarise posts over a week old, reducing any fear that you might miss something interesting in your feeds.

I appreciate the intention of Inkwell - reading your feeds is not another task. It should be a cosy home base to catch up with other thinkers and tinkerers, and contribute to the conversation in a real way.

Though NetNewsWire is an amazing piece of software that has served me well, Inkwell might just prompt me to write more.