The idea for Plankton came from years of personal experience and observation of blogging. It was the need to catapult the wonderful world of the diverse and colourful blogosphere to the next level.
This incredible democratisation of publishing on the big wide web has been massively monopolised in recent years. The sharing of stories, their images and videos is dominated by a few companies and their toxic, ad dependence on stickyness that’s optimised into comparative boredom. Everything appears new and individual, yet is pretty much the same.
My house, my blog, our web
Basically, we want to give all bloggers the power to build their own house, to invest in their own house and not to finance platforms through purchased reach – those platforms that draw attention away from blogs and independent publishers. In doing so, we promote solidarity that can wear the name social blogging on a broad chest.
Because the all-encompassing hamster wheel of purchased reach, likes and superficial scrolling, driven by a relentless algorithm, is tedious and expensive – and it leaves bloggers with hardly any other options to get attention for their original content.
But independent blogs in particular have a challenge: attracting new readers is time-consuming and expensive. Plankton is changing that.
Decentralised cooperation
We believe in bloggers as people who are independent with their content and technology. We believe in text and the written word for more context and depth. We want to work together instead of against each other. That’s why we want to build a network for bloggers (and anyone who wants to become one) in which independent voices support each other and work together to expand their reach.
In contrast to conventional centralised platforms, you don’t pay per click here, but a monthly fee gives you the opportunity to adapt reader acquisition to your needs. And there is a free version for anyone who wants to try it out first. Both are essentially based on our WordPress plug-in, the Plankton Social Teaser, which you can simply install.
Teaser as interface
Blog posts are displayed on your own blog in a teaser in the form of a small preview. Bloggers thus share their own readers with the linked blog posts. And at the same time receive readers of the blog posts on which they themselves are displayed. The content remains on the blogs, keeping them completely independent. The money for expensive and oversized solutions can be saved and the reach in the network is shared. This makes the blogosphere bigger and stronger.
Freedom as source code
Let’s retake the web as a free and decentralised non-place. Let’s live together and serve as a role model for others and create a future now that gives hope to all unfree people that social blogging is truly social.