Building Our Corner of the Open Social Web: pckt.cafe and More

Just over a month ago, we announced our integration with the Atmosphere and we're already beginning to see the numerous benefits this brings to pckt. AT Protocol integration has helped turn pckt into an even more lively community.

With the ability to discover and subscribe to blogs from across the web on read.pckt.blog, and the opportunity for your own blog to be discovered on other readers like the Leaflet reader.

Just this week, we've announced that pckt will be hosting a Personal Data Server for new users with pckt.cafe, allowing for access to tools and communities across the open social web, while bringing users better data portability and ownership. More details to follow.

Your New Home Base: pckt.cafe Personal Data Server (PDS)

Welcome to pckt.cafe !

It's the perfect internet hangout for writers, bloggers, and artists.

When you sign up for pckt blog, you will get the opportunity to claim a username that's part of our pckt.cafe personal data server.

That means you will get to choose a handle like @your-name-here.pckt.cafe which will be usable to sign in across the atmosphere for apps like Bluesky, Germ Network, Stream.place, and any place built with AT Protocol.

Your pckt.cafe handle will act as your identity across the open social web.

The data you create across the Atmosphere stays tied to your identity, hosted on our pds.pckt.cafe server. Your data belongs to you, and shouldn't be locked inside a single platform.

Using an Everything Handle like @you.pckt.cafe gives you the freedom to control your data. Since your identity belongs to you, your data can be moved to another personal data server at any time, or even be moved to one that you own and operate yourself with minimal effort.

The important takeaway is that your handle is your key. Your data moves with you !

Discovery Across the Web: read.pckt.blog

Take a look at our new read page at read.pckt.blog. It's a great place to discover posts from writers here on pckt and from the broader Atmosphere.

On the Local tab, you'll see posts from fellow writers in the pckt community. Switch to the All tab to explore posts from bloggers across the wider network. Any blog integrated with Standard.site will show here too, opening the door to even more voices and ideas.

Check it out and see what's being written:

Subscribe to any blog, no matter where the blog lives on the web, directly from the read page. New posts from your subscriptions will be displayed in the Subs tab, so you'll never miss a piece from your favorite bloggers.

While we think our own reader is really great, we also want to shout out a few other awesome places from the community where your posts from pckt will also be discoverable:

New Ways to Express Yourself: Photo Galleries

While we love a good text focused blog, we think your photos deserve a home too. We have brought a new gallery feature to pckt that will allow you to share beautiful collections of images right on your blog.

When galleries are added to the very top of your blog, they will display front and center on your blog's home page. Just make sure to not have any text above your gallery. We think this can give your blog some great personality.

Galleries can be included anywhere within your posts, so whether you've got a lot to say, or just want to share some pics, galleries will make a great addition to your posting capabilities.

These galleries are a great addition to the tools already available in pckt blog to help visually tell your stories, and craft a distinct aesthetic for your blog.

See pckt galleries in action:

What's Next for pckt?

pckt isn't just a blogging platform, or a Personal Data Server, or just a reader. We're building a creative home in the open social web. A place where your words and pictures can extend to many interconnected platforms, traveling beyond just one singular website.

We are building a community of bloggers without walled gardens. This is our space on the web, and it belongs to all of us who are building it together.

It has been amazing to see the support and encouragement we have already received from this community. Your energy makes us want to keep building and keep making pckt an even better place to write.

Looking forward, there is a lot we are excited about. We'd love to explore things like a recommendation system to help readers find great posts, more social features like comments, and eventually deeper curation features, like custom feeds that let you shape your own reading experience.

There's a hundred other things we would like to see going forward, and we're excited to keep pouring our hearts into this project, making it into the best blogging experience that we can.

We're building this together, and the best ideas often come from the community itself, and how they adapt the platform to be used in ways we haven't yet anticipated.

If you have ideas, feedback, or just want to say hello, mention us on Bluesky @pckt.blog

Until next time,

pckt