Pine.blog is: 1. A web based feed reader, 2. Sort of, a social network, 3. A blogging platform (host), 4. A searchable directory of RSS feeds.
Basic membership is free. This gives you access to the feed reader, social aspects and lets you add your pre-existing blogs to the directory. For a small fee, of $5 per mo. you get a hosted blog.
- Feed Reader: You get this in the form of a timeline of posts from the RSS feeds you subscribe to. The timeline is similar to Micro.blog or Twitter. You can have multiple timelines which is a bit like folders on a traditional feed reader.
- Social Network: You can Like and Recommend posts from the feed reader and you can opt to have the recipient be notified. I fuzzy on whether you can comment and if/so how. Somehow webmentions are incorporated into this and the blog.
- Blogging platform: I didn’t sign up for the free blog trial, since I don’t need a blog, so I do not know the answers to things like: A. does it have comments? B. how much customization (themes, widgets etc.) is allowed, C. if there is a way to import or export your blog’s content (Important). I do know they have blogrolls as an option and a nice discovery hat tip to old time blogging that is. If someone has a Pine.blog blog maybe they can leave a comment and fill us in on the features.
- Directory of RSS Feeds: This is the part that excites me and it separates Pine.blog from it’s competitors and shows a deep commitment to aiding in the discovery of blogs. You can add your feed for free even if you have an outside blog(s). Once accepted into the directory, the directory spiders the text from your RSS feed, this means that searches of the directory are of your content not just the name of your blog. Be excited with me, we have not had this capability for years! This is Big! This is also a reason to keep revisiting the site because the web has a real spidering RSS search directory. Again.
Source: From my notes at: Tiny Web Directory Forum
Next Step:
I’m going to add a bunch of feeds to the timeline(s) and see how this works out as a reader. I have some reservations about the timeline format as I find my timelines at Micro.blog and Twitter to be relentless so I have a hard time keeping up. Anyway I’ll test this over the coming weeks and report back. Also it will be interesting to see if I pick up new readers from the directory over the coming months.
More info about Pine.blog:
