Stephen Downes

I like this article both for its shout-out to Brad Fitzpatrick (who did rather more than just LiveJournal) and for capturing the idea of a personal web. Mastodon was like this for the first five years or so of its existence, but it's more of a public space now (and was always going to be). "Public social networks force us to use a different facet of our identities. In a private space with your friends, nobody really cares about your job, and nobody's hustling to promote whatever it is they're working on." But public spaces, "all feel a little bit like people are trying to sell ideas to you all of the time." Mastodon occupied a spot somewhere between those two, but I know the private space Ben Werdmuller is talking about.