What the hell is this?

Stigmi is a tiny microblogging site made in tribute of Twitter in the early 2010s.

Welcome to Stigmi! Stigmi (see #name) is a simple site all about sharing short, quick messages of what you're up to, what's on your mind, or what's going on around you. Around here, messages are called "Stigs" - like messages on Twitter are called "Tweets".


(if you're looking for how to use Stigmi, check out the help page)

Stigmi is a hobby project, created entirely by exerinity (@e) as a tribute of the specific feeling of early Twitter: a small, chronological website where the only thing happening to your timeline is the passage of time.

Stigmi is not powered by any algorithms or complex systems - it is a simple reverse-chronological timeline. Search simply filters Stigs. Everyone registered is listed in a directory.

Disclaimer

Stigmi is still in an extremely early alpha stage, is experimental, and might never see a full release. What you're looking at is a prototype: don't yet depend or rely on it. And frankly, I have to be a bit cautious with how far I take this project: I don't want the press, the authorities, the government, or Elon Musk beating my door down. Or anyone, for that matter...

At the heart of Stigmi are short messages called Stigs. To repost is to Restig. A stig can contain up to 350 characters, a location, links, and a piece of media - an image, a video, or audio. Media can be up to 50 MB in size.

It would be insulting to your intelligence if I explained how Stigs got their name, but I'll tell you anyway: Stig is shortened from Stigmi. Stigmi. Also, it's half-named-after Top Gear's The Stig, which is a show I really like...?

Stigmi looks half-ancient, but I assure you: it is fairly modern under the bonnet. The codebase is written in TypeScript, Scala, Rust, and Gleam. TypeScript for the most part, Scala for tooling and domain logic, Rust for media processing and timeline aggregation, and Gleam for a few front-end whatchamahouzits.

But why?

Nothing I could find really scratches the itch of a stupidly simple microblogger. X is, well, a frontier AI/creator/algorithmical/moneymaking/sellingout/misinformation "town square", Bluesky is a bit too fast-paced (and thats not a bad thing, I really like Bluesky), Threads is... Meta, and Mastodon is a bit too quiet, from my experience.

Furthermore, Stigmi is a pretty bizarre project. I don't wanna spoil too many secrets, but check this page.

The name

Stigmi (Στιγμή) is modern Greek for moment. A Stig is a moment. Stigmi is about sharing moments.

What are you waiting for? Go make your first Stig!