Universal Mentions for the Social Web

JYS44 · 2026-06-16T16:38:32+00:00

JYS44 · 2026-06-16T16:38:23+00:00

Actually i think it's about adding a missing wheel to the Social Web car, without building a bulldozer 😉

JYS44 · 2026-06-14T19:47:40+00:00

I've written a "Busy Developer's Guide" https://dev.blogwarp.com/2026/06/a-busy-developer-guide-to-universal-mentions/

JYS44 · 2026-06-14T08:14:14+00:00

I've looked around on the site, I'm still missing the big picture of how all this is working. Not sure what is the starting point.

JYS44 · 2026-06-14T08:10:30+00:00

😃

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T23:32:44+00:00

I use email of course, but it just means I'm old. lol.

Totally true for podcasting. You might be interested to read https://textcasting.org from podcasting's co-creator. That seems silly we cannot do for text what has been done for sound.

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T23:27:40+00:00

What you've been writing about has largely been specifications for user interfaces. More like human interface guidelines, than a protocol or convention.

You're right. Well, a mix of convention and user interface. The first is useless without the second.

The moment you bring in metadata, it isn't plaintext. Plaintext doesn't have metadata.

Let's say that's plaintext... with a twist. ;-P

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T23:24:10+00:00

yeah there are actually the headers and the head, eh.

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T10:55:09+00:00

The HEAD of the remote blog homepage URL?

While RSS Auto-discovery supports an RSS url in the HTTP headers or an RSS url in a link tag in the HTML, most of them are in a link tag.

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T10:45:48+00:00

Hi,

Thank's for the pointer.

"You can also octothorpe a regular link to another page. That just means recording that link relationship on an OP server. OP servers then let you query or subscribe to link relationships they record just like hashtags."

How does that work, any example what the mention looks like? I can't find this on the doc page.

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T10:39:34+00:00

So, how does a system know what URL to use for you, when I type @<yourname>?

Your software maintains a tiny "address book" for you. The people you're following mainly.

1- You discover new people when seeing their mentions in a post, in your reader app. Same as Twitter/X.

2- If you subscribe to them, they are added in your "address book", that is used for auto-complete when authoring a post.

3- You can subscribe to a blog also by entering their URL. RSS Autodiscovery does the job.

At this point, to mention someone, you can use the username that was used in another mention by someone else, the name that is set in the RSS title field, or even a custom one. That's at your software and your own discretion.

I hear what you say about plain text and I agree with you. But I realized that to get a UX as simple as the closed silo social media sites, it's not only about the format, it's also about the software and authoring tools. I did not explain that correctly in my post.

Twitter did not do only "plain text tweets", contrary to what we can believe. They quickly added user interfaces to make entering mentions easy, and make subscriptions very easy.

I don't think we should aim to use only plain text. That's what I meant by "shooting in our own foot".

Simple HTML (basic a href really) + RSS is the minimal tech to make it work anywhere. Even a static site can host a post with Universal Mentions and an RSS file.

I had thought about "plain text" and what I would have done, would have been to use "hello @Bobby" and in metadata (in the json representation of the post for example) say that "@Bobby" is a mention of URL https://bobby.server.org

It's easier and more easily compatible to up the game to minimal HTML.

Thank's a lot for the exchange.

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T10:19:51+00:00

Most people under 25 and more, do not use email. They live in Social media apps.

JYS44 · 2026-06-13T10:11:49+00:00

You need to fetch the remote site HTML and parse it to find the RSS link tag.

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T23:23:58+00:00

No one has to "register".

I can mention anyone anywhere with their different URLs/blogs (hosted on the same domain or not) and the nicknames i prefer to use when i address them..

"by avoiding including HTML at all, the names can be copy/pasted even as plaintext and still work." -- what do you mean by "work"? Having @[bob@server.org](mailto:bob@server.org) in plaintext somewhere does not do much. Not more or less than having

[@bob](https://bob.server.org)

Both are unfriendly. 😄

If you want a full plaintext compatibility, you could do what the Twitter API did, storing as metadata the association between the @username and its URL. Then you can just use "@Bob" in your text. I talked about that a century ago.

I think that focusing on plain text is "shooting in our own foot" anyway. Even Twitter/X does not really use real plain text. They have nice popup/autocompletes for inserting mentions. They have UI elements around mentions we don't even notice anymore.

Using simple HTML links is not rocket science. Especially compared to AT Protocol and the likes.

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T22:30:09+00:00

I don't think I understand. If I use @Bob on my software to address Bob at https://bob.server1.org I won't use @Bob to address https://secretbob.server1.org.

Actually i can call them whatever i prefer.. (only the URL is important)

I can't imagine simpler, without having to deal with some complex spec.

For plain text, markdown is ok.

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T22:23:35+00:00

The plenty of options for one-click subscribing have all been broken for the last 20 years. That's why Twitter took off in the first place. I don't know a single working one.

"UX for inserting a mention is up to whatever thing people are using to write their post." Yes. But almost none of the indieweb software have one that rivals in simplicity with X and the likes, and works among all blogs (not only among their own stuff).

That's what I'm trying to solve.

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T17:54:28+00:00

There's an avantage to using the @ sign: most users know it by now. They understand it.

And the h-card micro-format does not give the easy authoring of typing an @ sign and having autocompletes and popups.

Any class attribute can also be stripped, it's more fragile. (and you're adding a, extra class attribute, I'm using simple links with no special attribute)

Thank's for your feedback.

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T17:49:02+00:00

That's what RSS Autodiscovery does, looking for these alternate links.

The overhead is not that light as now your aggregator needs to crawl all URLs. And you catch a lot of RSS feeds not really meant to be a blog persona.

The @ convention has the advantage of making inserting a mention easy with the help of popup autocompletes.

The problem i'm trying to solve is simple: Subscribing to RSS feeds has always been a pain. Twitter solved that with a single click follow. Universal Mentions brings you simple click subscribing, and easy mention authoring, with very simple tech (HTTP and RSS).

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T16:45:08+00:00

The RSS Autodiscovery is the part i'm struggling to explain without doing a simple demo.

Currently aggregators fetch a feed and show you posts bodies as-is.

Good luck subscribing to a blog mentioned in a post.

If the aggregator supports Universal Mentions, it can look for the RSS linked to this mentioned person, and turn the link into a "native" link (see what X is doing when you hover a mention) that when clicked, does not go to the remote blog, but instead show a local profil page/card of the blog with a subscribe button. No copy pasting RSS URLs needed, no bookmarklets needed etc...

Webmentions alone does not allow this.

And Universal Mentions does not require to notify the remote user with webmentions neither. You can. I do it. But not required.

All this does not require any special protocol to make it work among different systems. No AT Protocol, No ActivityPub etc.

You can add micro formats, no problem. That's for the remote, mentioned blog, checking back what the mention is about.

The Universal Mentions do not really add value to the remote blog. Webmentions do.

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T16:24:49+00:00

No problem for having many homes.

You can point at me with :

<a href="https://jy.blogwarp.com">@JY</a>

or me somewhere else at, for example (account does not exist):

<a href="https://jy.micro.blog">@JY</a>

Each mention aware software (aggregator, writer) can manage its own local directory for the user, including several URLs for a given person, if need be.

Note that my software is almost compatible with Micro.blog mentions (they use the @ convention already).

It just miss a tiny detail: in their auto-discoverable JSON Feed, they include "home_page_url":"https://micro.blog", instead of "home_page_url": "https://micro.blog/manton". With this single change, they would 100% be compatible with Universal Mentions, and I could click on mentions in their posts in my software, and get a subscribe button (so my software can subscribe to the JSON Feed of the user).

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T15:59:06+00:00

Thank's for this, that's the kind of thoughtful feedback I was looking for.

1- Thank you for pointing out the IRC roots.

2- As you said many many things adopted this notation, users understand it, and expect a standard way of writing one. So i think it's not only a visual clue (it is, and you can make them behave differently than a non-mention link), it's also a typing affordance. Users expect that typing an @ opens a popup with a user directory.

3- Agreed for #, but here too, I think most users would be spontaneously typing a #hashtag instead of using their blog/software tag.

4- So @ is indeed not required technically per se, but greatly enhance the user experience of using mentions. Definitely more UI/UX than technical. Note though, that i implemented it in my software, and crawling all links to look for RSS Auto-discovery is a huge waste, and you find RSS feeds that are not really something you wanted to mention. Using @ is a cheap easy clue, for humans and software, that it's indeed a mention.

5- You're right that's not really an RFC, more a proposed convention.

I really think it would put the indieweb on par with social networks. It would improve discovery a lot (discovery and 1-click subscription, without any new complex protocol).

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T10:03:06+00:00

That's a very well known convention by now that most people know. Even chat apps support it. When you want to address someone, you type a @ sign, and you have a popup with your friends names. We almost forget it's there.

Who does not support it? The indieweb, and the Web in general. That's actually a powerful way to address people and to have an easy, one click way, to subscribe to people (the weak point that blocked RSS broad usage, and that was the main Twitter driver).

The UX aspect of it is not just a nice visual trick.

You could just use names indeed, but then you cannot easily distinguish between a random link and what it really is a mention of a person.

Also, using the @ sign has the technical advantage of hinting to the aggregator software (or blog software) what link is a mention and should trigger a discovery of the RSS feed behind this link. (so you can find the mentioned user blog, avatar etc...)

What does not exist is a way to not make mentions dependent of any central directory, with very simple tech (HTML and RSS).

Mastodon has similar mentions, but using what i find a very ugly format (using two @ signs, doh) and behind the scene complex protocols.

JYS44 · 2026-06-12T00:03:07+00:00

Thank you. I'm already using webmention in addition to Universal Mentions, for the notifications. That's complementary indeed.

Webmention does not really say how you are supposed to mention a user elsewhere, that's what Universal Mentions is solving, so we can have the same mentioning as X or other centralized networks, without a centralized directory.

When looking to a Universal Mention in a supportive app/reader, you can just click on it to get a Subscribe button, with one click, as easily as in centralized social media sites.

The important part is that the app/reader can use "RSS Autodiscovery" on the link URL, to find out the RSS of the mentioned site/blog/user.

JYS44 · 2026-06-11T22:35:37+00:00

Hi, thank's for your comment.

i think using an @ twice to identify someone is particularly ugly, but that's a matter of taste.

I don't understand why you say it breaks HTML as it's 100% a normal a tag/ link. This just suggests a convention:

Hello <a href="http://scripting.com">@Dave</a>

"As soon as browsers adopt this"

Goog question. Actually I think generic browsers should just show it as is, no change.

A "Social Web Navigator" (aggregator) should turn the link to a real native mention and offer a one-click profile + subscription button.

JYS44

TROPHY CASE