Social networks were built on short posts designed for speed and scale. But what if the next era of the web was built for something deeper?

Two of the social web’s “longformers” are working on this. John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost, and Matthias Pfefferle, the developer behind the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, are at the forefront of integrating social features with blogs, newsletters, essays — anything that doesn’t fit in a box of 500 characters or less.

In this episode of Dot Social, they talk with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue about rediscovering the magic of the blogosphere; why formatting, identity, and interoperability are tricky problems to solve; and where writing belongs in the next chapter of the internet.

Highlights of this conversation: 1:24 Why should writers and bloggers care about this topic? 8:35 How the plugin has been received 12:15 Building social into blogs 17:35 Will this increase discovery? 20:15 Models for discovery 23:03 Tumblr in its heyday and status of integration 25:17 How they’re thinking about AT Proto 33:20 Thoughts on bridging 37:16 Core principles around integrating long-form content into protocol 44:06 Leveraging lessons from email? 46:16 Need for collaboration 49:10 Rough edges 52:50 New experiences

Mentioned or related to this episode:

• Julian Lam of Node BB https://nodebb.org/
• “Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status, with Citation Needed's Molly White” https://dot-social.simplecast.com/episodes/molly-white-sxsw
• “Steps Forward in Long-form Text” https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/05/01/steps-forward-in-long-form-text/

🔎 You can find John at https://john.onolan.org/ and Matthias at https://pfefferle.dev/. ✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social. 🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/