What is the Fediverse analogue of blogs? Specifically, which facet of the Fediverse provides the features that blogging used to provide:

• long-form posts (without character limits)
• embedded images and other media
• perma-links and RSS / Atom feeds and other features so that content remains linkable into the future
• commenting and engagement and associated moderation features
• re-blogging and sharing
• community: blogs self-organising into interest areas, pollinate other blogs, link to each other, direct their readers towards each other, etc.

And, most importantly, the ability to create, grow and nurture a following or audience?

I’m on Mastodon and on Lemmy and, in my opinion, neither of those quite hit the mark.

• Masto is too close to bird-site: character limits (nearly always), shoddy threads, and the fact that one is invariably just firing toots into a torrential onslaught of public toots unless one actually already has a following. Hash-tags and other topic-related features seem ill used, throughout, so discoverability is pretty low unless you already have a platform. Engaging with others in replies earns a lot of boosts and favourites but zero followers no matter how well your reply-toots are received.

• Lemmy is too close to anotheR site. It’s great for being a refuge from that and replacement for that but really not a blogging platform.

I’m happy with both of the above for what they do. I really like the discourse in Masto’s reply threads, actually, but it seems useless for actually building a following for one’s self. I’m rather new to Lemmy but I like what I’m finding, so far.