Building communities across platforms
“The social web offers an exciting opportunity for Newsmast to spread knowledge-sharing on social media more widely.”
That’s the conclusion of a report into knowledge-sharing communities on Bluesky and Threads, published today by the Newsmast Foundation.
We’ve backed this up by identifying twenty top communities where there is good overlap and the potential to bring communities together. Communities like Politics, Photography and Philosophy. Science, Space and Technology. Black Voices, Climate Change and Journalism and Comment. All high impact spaces where people can share ideas, comments and perspectives.
"Our goal is to link up these different communities, and the people who post to them, using the Fediverse as a hub."
Newsmast, the combined server and app we run in the Fediverse, is built around Communities. The inspiration was the incredible on-line community which sprung up on Twitter following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An eclectic mix of academics, OSINT enthusiasts, journalists, retired generals and people in Ukraine.
In the heady moment of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, and all that started to unfold after that, we, along with many others, believed we could make a fresh start, bringing communities together on a new platform.
Turns out that’s a lot harder to do in reality. There are a few voices from this pro-Ukraine community in the Fediverse. A key academic led a move to Bluesky, which sadly didn’t succeed. Of the new platforms, Pebble, Artifact and Post haven’t made it. Newsmast has established a base in the Fediverse, but we’re tiny. So we’re now working across the wider social web, with the aim of bringing communities together across platforms.
We’re just at the start of this movement, and this report sets out where we’re putting our efforts. Now we need to get communities on board to follow Bridgy Fed or turn on Fediverse Sharing - with as many people as possible opting-in. The potential is huge.
Knowledge-sharing is a great use case for the benefits of federation: breaking free of walled gardens and interconnecting across platforms.
It’s a couple of clicks at most: please do it!