--- title: "Remember the open timeline? The mssgs feed brings it back - mssgs" description: "The mssgs feed brings back the open public timeline: quick heads-ups from your street, town and town hall, newest first, open to read without an account." canonical: https://blog.mss.gs/en/the-open-public-feed-is-back language: en --- # Remember the open timeline? The mssgs feed brings it back One public feed where anyone can post a quick heads-up about their street, their town or their town hall, and anyone can read it: no follows, newest first, and no account needed to read along. Remember when one public timeline told you what was happening, while it was happening? A road was closed, the bins were late, the council had voted, there was smoke over the station. Someone nearby posted it, anyone could read it, and within minutes the whole town knew. We missed that. So we built the mssgs feed: one open, public timeline for quick heads-ups from your street, your town and your town hall. ## The timeline that told you what was happening In January 2009, a passenger on a New York ferry took a photo of the plane that had just landed in the Hudson River and posted it to Twitter. He was no reporter and had only a small following, yet within minutes his picture was being seen around the world. That was the magic of the early public timeline: anyone could post, anyone could read along, and the newest news was always on top. Over the years that open feed slowly closed. In 2016 Twitter, now X, began putting what it saw as the best tweets at the top, ahead of the newest, and in 2023 it ended free access to its API. We think the open, live public feed deserves a comeback, and we built it into mssgs. ## Meet the mssgs feed The mssgs feed is one public timeline for everything people on mssgs share with everyone. It is made for the quick heads-up: a few lines or a photo, a hashtag, and your town. - **No follows, no audience to build.** Nobody follows anybody. Your very first post goes to everyone, so a heads-up from a brand-new account gets the same stage as one from the town hall. - **Newest first, live.** Today, everyone sees every post with the newest on top, and new posts come in while you read. - **Open to everyone.** [feed.mss.gs](https://feed.mss.gs) works in any browser, with no account and no sign-in wall. Every post has a page of its own that you can share or put on your website. - **Your town, never your doorstep.** Attach your city so people nearby find your post. It carries the city, never the exact spot where you wrote it. - **Fast, and checked where it counts.** A text post is live in seconds. Photos and videos appear once moderation has checked them, and community moderators handle what people report. ## Quick heads-ups from your neighbourhood The best posts in the feed are short and useful: the things you would tell a neighbour over the fence. - A street that is closed tonight, or a burst water main on the corner. - A lost cat, a found bike, a set of keys on the bench by the playground. - A street party on Saturday, or a call for extra hands in the community garden. - A warning about scam calls going round the neighbourhood. Add a hashtag such as #roadworks or #lostandfound and attach your town. Your neighbours see it in the feed, and anyone who only wants that hashtag can open it on its own or read it in an RSS reader. #roadworks Station Road closed Monday to Friday, diversion via Church Street. #safety Scam calls going round tonight. Your bank will never ask for your PIN by phone. #schoolnews Tomorrow is a study day: the school is closed. #streetparty Saturday from 3 pm on the square. Bring a chair! *What a heads-up can look like: short, with a hashtag and a town. Examples, not real accounts.* ## What your town hall is doing, at a glance The same feed works for the people who run the place. A municipality posts road works, waste collection or new opening hours. The police share a warning or a found bike. A school announces a study day without parents joining yet another group chat. A local paper posts its stories with the town attached. Because every post goes to everyone, nobody has to find and follow the right account first. Residents read it in the feed, a local news site shows it on its own pages, and the screen in the town hall can show just what is happening nearby, picked out by place and by hashtag. Post from the mssgs app, or straight from your own systems with a [feed API key](https://mss.gs/en/developers/feed): your code posts as your account, under the same rules as the app. Reading is free for everyone: the [feed API](https://feed.mss.gs/developers) needs no key and no account, and every list also comes as RSS, by hashtag and by place. ## Pass it on with a repost Seen something your neighbours should know? Repost it. A repost brings the post back to the top of the feed for everyone, with your name above it, so an important heads-up travels further instead of sinking out of sight. Reply in words, with a sticker or with a GIF, and like what helped you. ## Read it anywhere An open feed should be open to read, so this one is: - **In your browser** at [feed.mss.gs](https://feed.mss.gs), without an account. - **In the mssgs app** on your phone, where you also post, reply and repost. The feed opens in the desktop app and the web app too. - **In your RSS reader**, for the whole feed, one hashtag or one area. - **On your own website**, as an embedded post or through the free public API. And it all comes from close to home: mssgs is made in the Netherlands, the servers mssgs runs on are hosted with BIT in Ede, there are no ads, and nothing is ever used to train AI. ## Post your first heads-up Get mssgs on your phone and tap +. Tap it once to share a photo, a slideshow or a video, or double-tap it to write a post of up to 500 characters. Add a hashtag and, if you like, your town. Your very first post reaches everyone. **Know something your neighbours should know?** [Open the live feed](https://feed.mss.gs), see [everything the feed can do](https://mss.gs/en/feed), or [get mssgs](https://mss.gs/en/downloads) and post your first heads-up. Want a place for your street or your club to talk it through? [Start a group on mssgs](https://mss.gs/en/start). *Twitter’s history as told in the sources below, checked on 8 October 2026.* ## Sources - [NPR: Rescuer Shares Experience, Janis Krums on the ferry at the Hudson landing (January 2009)](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/99442918) - [Sarasota Magazine: a profile of Janis Krums (June 2009)](https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/news-and-profiles/2009/06/noisemaker-5) - [Twitter: Never miss important Tweets from people you follow (10 February 2016)](https://blog.x.com/official/en_us/a/2016/never-miss-important-tweets-from-people-you-follow.html) - [SiliconANGLE: Twitter is closing free access to its API starting Feb. 9 (2 February 2023)](https://siliconangle.com/2023/02/02/twitter-closing-free-access-api-starting-february-9/) [All posts](https://blog.mss.gs/en)