Some Thoughts on pollen.place

On one of my many ATproto wanderings, I somehow came across pollen.place and have spent the last few days just absolutely consumed by it. It has enormous potential as a Tumblr-esque option for the ATmosphere and I really like the look and feel and usability and it seems like early days and the creator, @keithlaugh.love seems genuinely awesome!

Pollen - A place for things to spread

All that being said, I've found a few things that either (a) need fixing or (b) would be super cool to have and decided I would write a little posty post about it, because why not? In the words of many-a-ATproto users, "We can just do things"!

Profile Related

For the most part, I love the way my profile looks on pollen. However, I've noticed a couple little things that could use some working around or that I'd like to see.

https://pollen.place/@valerierayne13.bsky.social

My profile image doesn't show up on my header, although it does when I make posts

It lets me add a link in my profile settings but it's nowhere to be found on my profile

A little thing but would be cool is if someone could visit me on pollen and hop over to my BlueSky easy

A post sort option would be cool, especially once you start getting up into the hundreds of posts. Like sort by polls or quotes or atmosphere-related stuff. I know this is available on the explore page but I think being able to see just one users post sorts would be cool.

I really enjoyed the ability to feature my commonly used hashtags on my profile on Mastodon - this would also be fun to see

Posts

I cannot tell you enough how much I love the posting options on pollen - literally so much fun! Currently, they include:

Words

Image

Photo Booth

Quote

Link

Chat

Poll

To Do

Atmosphere

AMA

I have experimented with every single one of them and there are a few that I can see myself using super regularly. Below is a list of my general thoughts and experiences and such, in no particular order.

When you reblog someone's post in response to their post, at least on mobile, after you've reached a certain wordcount you can't scroll down to press the post button. You can't scroll down to add an image, if needed. (I may have fixed this by changing a profile appearance option but I'm not sure yet.) I wish I could show you what I mean, which brings me to my next point...

Posts don't have links. Meaning I can't embed a specific post say, on my Leaflet. An external share option would kinda be awesome. I take it back, you can link to posts. Gotta click the timestamp.

https://pollen.place/post/did%3Aplc%3Apxxvg3q7gbzlbsdxbx6353wh/3mjjb75c2hs27

Comments! There was recently a poll asking if comments should be added, so maybe we'll see that in the future. Having to reblog constantly to respond to things gets a little cumbersome and especially for longer threads of things.

@ mentions - being able to @ mention other users would be hugely helpful. If there is a way, I have yet to find it.

I don't know how possible this is but I'm a big fan of never-ending polls. Current longest length is 1 week but sometimes that just ain't long enough, especially in the early days of a site. I'm gonna bet that the one poll I have up will get exactly 1 vote this week - from me...

Absolutely obsessed with the AMA feature (no surprise, right?). The only thing I would maybe add to it is either the ability to pin it or signify that you're running an AMA. I've only got a few posts but already you'd have to scroll forever to find it. This could be as simple as adding the post sort option I was talking about before (assuming that's simple).

Notifications of some sort. I imagine if the comments function becomes something, this will be naturally implemented.

I've already posted on pollen a little bit about the atmosphere connections, which is also really cool. As I wander around the ATmosphere, I love the interconnectedness of all the different sites and being able to kinda curate this massive web of all my interests. So far, the only two connections that work well enough are BlueSky and Leaflet - which is great but would also be cool if:

I could post my photos from Grain

I could share my communities on Nooki or Roomy

I could add my reviews from Popfeed or BookHive

I could show off my collections on Semble, KipClip and especially Linkring (duh!)

While most of these are listed as options, many of them currently don't work or show "Untitled"

It's a very minor aesthetic-type thing but it would be easier if these were either sorted alphabetically (don't really like this option) or kinda grouped together (like this option better). For example: Leaflet, Pckt and Offprint being near each other since they're all blogging platforms. Or BookHive and Popfeed being near each other since they're both tracking/review sites.

Definitely think BlueSky should stay at the top of the list!

Leaflet appears twice in the list

The connection seems to be a little glitchy at the moment between all of these connections. Sometimes it loads up fine and sometimes I get an error. Currently I'm only seeing BlueSky posts from 03/15/2026 and before. My Leaflet posts seem to be all out of order (although this could be because I have 3 or 5 publications...)

This is really a non-issue but probably one of my biggest pet peeves. Would love to either translate on the site or be able to select only seeing posts in your preferred language. I don't speak German or Japanese and kinda hate when I have to just scroll on past a big long series of posts that I can't understand. 21st Century problems, am I right?!?

Overall, I am wildly impressed with pollen.place and can absolutely see an abundance of potential. I'm enjoying exploring it and can't wait to see more people on it because I think it'll be so much fun to connect with others there. Huge shoutout to @keithlaugh.love for building something so beautiful, usable and much needed in the ATmosphere!

Shameless plug: If you haven't followed me there yet, now is the perfect time!

Valerie Rayne (@valerierayne13.bsky.social) - Pollen