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Micro.blog launches new 'Studio' tier with video hosting

134 points by justin-reeves 11mo ago

kstrauser 11mo ago
Just wanted to say that I love Micro.blog. It finally got me off my own Hugo plus voodoo setup because it’s so freaking ergonomic, and decently priced. I had fun playing with SSGs for years. I’m having more fun just writing posts and letting them get broadcast to Mastodon on wherever else I’ve configured them at the same time. It wasn’t clear to me until I read Manton’s book, but its goal is to be a social media service that’s built completely on open web standards that everyone can participate with.
mnemonet 11mo ago
It's a great idea and challenging YouTube's monopoly is noble, but I don't see how the economics work out. The current pricing [1] charges $20/month for videos up to 20 minutes of video, which is reasonable but still far too expensive for most people to use. It's a great first step, but I struggle to see who this would be used by. So far Bluesky seems to be the only decentralized platform that's broken into the mainstream, and it'll only be more difficult for the video market. - [1]: https://micro.blog/about/pricing https://micro.blog/about/pricing
- simonw 11mo ago
  Making a 20 minute long video is a sizable time investment. I imagine many people who are willing to invest that much effort into creating content would be happy to pay $20/month for hosting.
  - mnemonet 11mo ago
    That's a fair point, especially considering everything else you get with the plan. However, the pricing is still a far cry from non-decentralized solutions (for example, MUX's free plan offers 100K minutes per month [1]) and so the only other selling point is joining the fediverse—which is a good thing, but hard to get people to convert on (in Bluesky's case the turmoil that is now X was required). - [1]: https://mux.com/pricing/video https://mux.com/pricing/video
- tracker1 11mo ago
  Was curious about Cloudflare's pricing as a comparison... it looks like $1 per 1000 minutes viewed, which means a 10 minute video will cost #1 to have 100 views... That just seems prohibitively expensive to me, it's pretty much 100% of the lower end of video advertising just for delivery fees. I know there are competing and cheaper services, but it still seems to be a big burden to get into. I've been trying to use Rumble a bit more, as well as appreciate the entry of Pepperbox, Floatplane and others. It's still a bit of a mess and none of them match the 10' experience of YouTube on Android TV, but it's getting better.
  - simonw 11mo ago
    $1/1,000 minutes is the pricing for Cloudflare's "Cloudflare Stream" product, which is specifically about live video streaming: https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/pricing/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/pricing/ If you're not streaming live I believe you can serve video content out of R2 instead, which still somehow only charges for storage but offers completely free outbound bandwidth (egress).
    - JimDabell 11mo ago
      Cloudflare Stream isn’t just for live-streaming, it’s for generic video hosting too. It does transcoding, adaptive bitrate, HLS, etc. It’s terrible and you shouldn’t use it, but it does a lot more than just serve static video files like R2.
      - jadbox 11mo ago
        Just to add, you should never serve video straight from R2 unless you pre-render all your videos for all major devices. Otherwise you get very, very subpar device buffering performance. Generally use R2 as a cache layer over your stream processor (CF Stream).
    - tracker1 11mo ago
      I may be misremembering, but I thought R2 terms disallowed video streaming content... I'm unable to find any references to this now, though I didn't do an exhaustive search.
- RobotToaster 11mo ago
  It's also nowhere near long enough for most podcasts I've listened to.
rcmjr 11mo ago
This is a great little site that might motivate me to leave substack
- gannonburgett 11mo ago
  [dead]
simonw 11mo ago
> Because if hosting videos were easy, YouTube wouldn’t be the only game in town. Is self-hosting video still difficult, today in 2025? My intuition is that there are less formats to worry about today, and serving video from static hosting that supports HTTP range headers may be enough for most devices to work. What are the remaining hard problems? Maybe mechanisms to negotiate lower resolution for slower connections? UPDATE: Looks like this offers some answers to my questions: https://help.micro.blog/t/micro-blog-studio/4081 https://help.micro.blog/t/micro-blog-studio/4081 The hardest bit appears to be HLS - HTTP Live Streaming - the thing where a video gets divided up into lots of little .ts segment files and served via a m3u8 playlist.
- skydhash 11mo ago
  I believe the bit where HLS is needed is when you want to change the format or the resolution on the fly. But browsers and othe players are perfectly capable of buffering and seeking single video files. For most media, 1080p is fine enough. Add 720p and you have enough for 99% of the world.
- jshen 11mo ago
  The other issue is that it's expensive. You can put a video on youtube for free and they carry the cost and cover it with advertising. If you self-host and your videos get a LOT of traffic it gets expensive quickly.
  - skydhash 11mo ago
    LOT of traffic is a big if. A lot of videos only have 1k+ views and I will believe those are mostly drive-by viewing. Using a CDN can help you if you go viral.
    - dewey 11mo ago
      A video CDN isn't cheap though, so outsourcing that to YouTube is the best option for most people.
    - jshen 11mo ago
tethys 11mo ago
Official announcement (that gets straight to the point): https://www.manton.org/2025/11/11/microblog-studio.html https://www.manton.org/2025/11/11/microblog-studio.html
james-bcn 11mo ago
Now that Vimeo has been taken over by Bending Spoons it's good to have more hosting options.
mertleee 11mo ago
[dead]
terrycody 11mo ago
Is that mean I can post "anything" included erotic related stuff like nude images and videos on it, and never worried about being deleted or banned? Btw, indexing issue is another big problem on this platform.

134 points by justin-reeves 11mo ago

Just wanted to say that I love Micro.blog. It finally got me off my own Hugo plus voodoo setup because it’s so freaking ergonomic, and decently priced. I had fun playing with SSGs for years. I’m having more fun just writing posts and letting them get broadcast to Mastodon on wherever else I’ve configured them at the same time. It wasn’t clear to me until I read Manton’s book, but its goal is to be a social media service that’s built completely on open web standards that everyone can participate with.

mnemonet 11mo ago

It's a great idea and challenging YouTube's monopoly is noble, but I don't see how the economics work out. The current pricing [1] charges $20/month for videos up to 20 minutes of video, which is reasonable but still far too expensive for most people to use. It's a great first step, but I struggle to see who this would be used by. So far Bluesky seems to be the only decentralized platform that's broken into the mainstream, and it'll only be more difficult for the video market. - [1]: https://micro.blog/about/pricing https://micro.blog/about/pricing

simonw 11mo ago
Making a 20 minute long video is a sizable time investment. I imagine many people who are willing to invest that much effort into creating content would be happy to pay $20/month for hosting.
- mnemonet 11mo ago
  That's a fair point, especially considering everything else you get with the plan. However, the pricing is still a far cry from non-decentralized solutions (for example, MUX's free plan offers 100K minutes per month [1]) and so the only other selling point is joining the fediverse—which is a good thing, but hard to get people to convert on (in Bluesky's case the turmoil that is now X was required). - [1]: https://mux.com/pricing/video https://mux.com/pricing/video
tracker1 11mo ago
Was curious about Cloudflare's pricing as a comparison... it looks like $1 per 1000 minutes viewed, which means a 10 minute video will cost #1 to have 100 views... That just seems prohibitively expensive to me, it's pretty much 100% of the lower end of video advertising just for delivery fees. I know there are competing and cheaper services, but it still seems to be a big burden to get into. I've been trying to use Rumble a bit more, as well as appreciate the entry of Pepperbox, Floatplane and others. It's still a bit of a mess and none of them match the 10' experience of YouTube on Android TV, but it's getting better.
- simonw 11mo ago
  $1/1,000 minutes is the pricing for Cloudflare's "Cloudflare Stream" product, which is specifically about live video streaming: https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/pricing/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/pricing/ If you're not streaming live I believe you can serve video content out of R2 instead, which still somehow only charges for storage but offers completely free outbound bandwidth (egress).
  - JimDabell 11mo ago
    Cloudflare Stream isn’t just for live-streaming, it’s for generic video hosting too. It does transcoding, adaptive bitrate, HLS, etc. It’s terrible and you shouldn’t use it, but it does a lot more than just serve static video files like R2.
    - jadbox 11mo ago
      Just to add, you should never serve video straight from R2 unless you pre-render all your videos for all major devices. Otherwise you get very, very subpar device buffering performance. Generally use R2 as a cache layer over your stream processor (CF Stream).
  - tracker1 11mo ago
    I may be misremembering, but I thought R2 terms disallowed video streaming content... I'm unable to find any references to this now, though I didn't do an exhaustive search.
RobotToaster 11mo ago
It's also nowhere near long enough for most podcasts I've listened to.

rcmjr 11mo ago

This is a great little site that might motivate me to leave substack

gannonburgett 11mo ago
[dead]

simonw 11mo ago

> Because if hosting videos were easy, YouTube wouldn’t be the only game in town. Is self-hosting video still difficult, today in 2025? My intuition is that there are less formats to worry about today, and serving video from static hosting that supports HTTP range headers may be enough for most devices to work. What are the remaining hard problems? Maybe mechanisms to negotiate lower resolution for slower connections? UPDATE: Looks like this offers some answers to my questions: https://help.micro.blog/t/micro-blog-studio/4081 https://help.micro.blog/t/micro-blog-studio/4081 The hardest bit appears to be HLS - HTTP Live Streaming - the thing where a video gets divided up into lots of little .ts segment files and served via a m3u8 playlist.

skydhash 11mo ago
I believe the bit where HLS is needed is when you want to change the format or the resolution on the fly. But browsers and othe players are perfectly capable of buffering and seeking single video files. For most media, 1080p is fine enough. Add 720p and you have enough for 99% of the world.
jshen 11mo ago
The other issue is that it's expensive. You can put a video on youtube for free and they carry the cost and cover it with advertising. If you self-host and your videos get a LOT of traffic it gets expensive quickly.
- skydhash 11mo ago
  LOT of traffic is a big if. A lot of videos only have 1k+ views and I will believe those are mostly drive-by viewing. Using a CDN can help you if you go viral.
  - dewey 11mo ago
    A video CDN isn't cheap though, so outsourcing that to YouTube is the best option for most people.
  - jshen 11mo ago

tethys 11mo ago

Official announcement (that gets straight to the point): https://www.manton.org/2025/11/11/microblog-studio.html https://www.manton.org/2025/11/11/microblog-studio.html

james-bcn 11mo ago

Now that Vimeo has been taken over by Bending Spoons it's good to have more hosting options.

mertleee 11mo ago

[dead]

terrycody 11mo ago

Is that mean I can post "anything" included erotic related stuff like nude images and videos on it, and never worried about being deleted or banned? Btw, indexing issue is another big problem on this platform.