Organisations and content creators enter the Fediverse
In a Fedicentric world, everything revolves around Mastodon.
Mastodon has around 80% of the monthly active users on the Fediverse. Mastodon sets the standard, and is where the action is. So a lot of Fediverse debates revolve around Mastodon policies, Mastodon releases, what Mastodon should and could do better.
Look outside, and the world is turned on its head. Once we start thinking about onboarding organisations and content creators the important question isn’t how do we persuade this organisation to set up a Mastodon server, or get this content creator to open a Fediverse account (the Fedicentric question). The question is:
How can we persuade organisations and creators that it makes sense to federate - reducing reliance on walled gardens, building community and owning and controlling content wherever it appears - using tools they already have in place.
Spoiler alert - it’s not the classic Fediverse candidates of Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy and Peertube.
Organisations have the tools
Taking an organisation-centric view, instead of trying to get organisations on to Mastodon, we need to look at the tools they already use which are federated, or about to federate. Who are the big players?
WordPress. That’s the giant.
Of the 2 billion websites in the world, around 43% run on WordPress. Taking websites with a CMS, it’s share is even higher, at over 60% (Barn2). Thanks to pioneering work by Matthias Pfefferle we have an ActivityPub WordPress plugin. This turns any WordPress blog into a federated account, along with any associated author profiles. Users in the Fediverse can follow the blog through whatever software and app they use, and comments will appear both on the federated profile and the blog itself:
“Enter the fediverse with ActivityPub, broadcasting your blog to a wider audience! Attract followers, deliver updates, and receive comments from a diverse user base of ActivityPub-compliant platforms.” (Wordpress)
There was quite a bit of noise around this in the Fediverse when it was first released, but that has now quietened down. There are over 6,000 installations, and a recent post by Eugen Rochko of Mastodon showed that Jetpack (WordPress) is the second largest source of posts on mastodon.social, after the Mastodon web UI. So from this Fedicentric point of view, the plugin is a success.
Looking at this from the outside, we’ve barely begun. There are over 835 million websites using WordPress. 2 million downloads a year. And just under 60,000 plugins to compete with. We need to get going! The issue isn’t how many of the posts on the Fediverse come from Wordpress. It’s how many websites are federated. Those 6,000 installations are just 0.00000007% of all WordPress websites. Automattic is committed: it acquired the plugin in March 2023. Matthias Pfefferle now works for Automattic, which is fantastic. There’s a huge opportunity here for companies to make an easy step to federation. However there hasn’t been a viral take up by website managers - we need to make this happen.
There are more parts of organisations’ digital presence which are federating too. Each tool acts as a potential jumping off point to the Fediverse.
Forums are big.
It’s a huge market, and there’s more good news. According to a recent market report, Discourse is the number one open source forum software provider - and it’s an active member of the Threadiverse Working Group, working out how to federate forums. NodeBB, a smaller player, is working with Discourse to drive this forward. It's a great example of a shift from Fedicentrism. Instead of focusing on Lemmy, our in-house Reddit competitor, two established providers in the corporate world are driving change, learning from what Lemmy and other Fediverse developers have done.
Chat is big too.
Here the leading potential player is Matrix - an open source competitor to Discord. There's lots we can do to bring chat into the mix. But Matrix doesn’t list a live bridge to the Fediverse yet - so there’s work to be done before this tool becomes available.
Social media tools are another jumping off point.
This is a massive market, but it’s tough. Social media managers are looking for immediate reach - a metric where the Fediverse falls short. They aren’t taking a long term view. Where we can get the social media managers on board, one of the smaller tools does offer federation: Buffer. It's ranked as one of the best tools on the market. So there’s a lot of potential there.
Fedica is the other federated social media tool. “Fedica has just added Pixelfed to its roster of supported platforms. This is huge for those of us who want to protect and control our social content and audience while juggling various networks” (Fedica blog). Born out of Twitter analytics, Fedica offers a different take on social media for organisations.
RSS is a wild card.
Highly adopted a few years ago, it nearly died out, before a resurgence driven by podcasts (more of which later). In the Fediverse, the most dynamic use of RSS is by Flipboard. Flipboard turns RSS feeds into attractive, easy to use magazines - and now it’s federating these too. So it’s a route for organisations and publishers to reach the Fediverse, turning their Flipboard magazines into federated accounts. Flipboard is also looking to position itself as a reader for blogs like Ghost - so it’s one to watch. Using Flipboard latent RSS feeds from publishers, could be revitalised as a route into the Fediverse.
All in all that’s not a bad start to Fediverse tooling for organisations. The challenge now is to bring them on board.
Content creators lead the way
Content creators are already further along the curve to possible federation compared to organisations. Many have made the jump from walled gardens and mainstream publishing to building their own communities while controlling (and earning money from) their content. A lot of this happens inside the big social media platforms. There are also new walled gardens like Substack.
Now tainted by accommodating extreme right wing speech, Substack offers a case study of what can be accomplished for content creators through alternative, Fediverse enabled solutions. It brings together blogging, videos, podcasts and a closed social network for comments and chat.
The challenge is to replicate this through a mix of established tools, connected to the Fediverse. The good news is that this is happening, and the pieces are already there.
WordPress is big in blogging too
- and it already has the ActivityPub plugin. Now Ghost and Buttondown are following suit, using ActivityPub to bring a federated version of what Substack is doing. In contrast to the Forum group they are doing this in a fully Mastodon-centric way - going with what works and has the biggest reach.
Podcasting has lots of potential
- and here we’re more in the early stages. There’s an in-house, EU backed proof of concept of what could be done, in Castopod. On this platform, every podcast automatically becomes a Fediverse account, in the same way as Ghost is planning for blogs. But it’s tiny, with no market presence. Looking at the big players, a lot of the market is locked in to walled gardens like Spotify or Apple Music.
The one strong link to the Fediverse is RSS. Used as the announcement vehicle for podcasts from the beginning, it’s now been revamped through Podcasting 2.0. Extra tags enable more information to be shared, and payments to be made by listeners. That means there’s a broadcast link to the Fediverse - but it’s not two way. We need one or more of the bigger alternative players to adopt a similar model to Castopod, Ghost or the WordPress plugin, if we are to fully hook up podcasts to the Fediverse. There's a big move about to happen on this from TrueFans - so watch this space.
Long and short-form videos are further away.
There’s a long form video Fediplayer in Peertube, and a short-form player on the way in Loops, but they don't’ have any presence among creators. YouTube, TikTok and Instagram dominate, with no room for any connection to the Fediverse.
Buffer is also a player for content creators.
Over the last two years it has pursued a down and wide strategy - moving down to individuals and small businesses - and widening the range of services offered. So it’s very much looking to reach creators, influencers and small scale entrepreneurs.
Enter the Fediverse
The culture and spirit of the Fediverse are built around it being a separate place, away from mega-corporations and toxic interactions. And it’s been physically built around direct alternatives to consumer platforms: Mastodon for Twitter, Friendica for Facebook, Pixelfed for Instagram, PeerTube for YouTube, Lemmy for Reddit. Now things are changing. We don’t all want to break away from walled gardens just to create our own isolated archipelago (some do - and creating that is another story). And it’s proven incredibly hard to get consumers to move away from the big platforms.
Working with organisations and their digital tools offers a new way forward.
Once they connect to the Fediverse through their established platforms, they can bring with them waves of new, federated users. We’re just at the start of this process. And the good news is that we have some big players onboard, who are aligned with the social ethos and goals of the Fediverse.
For organisations we have WordPress, Discourse and Buffer. For publishers - Flipboard and wider RSS feeds.
For content creators it’s WordPress and Buffer again, Ghost and the team at Podcasting 2.0.
These are serious players, with a mix of leaders - WordPress and Discourse - challengers - Ghost, NodeBB and Buffer - and innovators - Flipboard and Podcasting 2.0.
The how and why
Bringing organisations and content creators into the Fediverse isn’t about the how. The tools are already there. It’s about the why. That’s where we need to do more.
We need to articulate why it’s better to have a federated blog on Ghost than a closed account on Substack. Why podcasts should be federated accounts. Why organisations need to turn on federation - not just on their Threads accounts - but on their websites, forums and blogs. That’s where Fediverse storytelling comes in. The campfires, the open spaces, the secret paradise. It’s the joy of the open web - a place for organisations to make a stake, grow, nurture, build a home.
And the punchline of the story? We’re just at the very beginning. It’s like the world wide web all over again, thirty years on.
The who - and what are we doing?
Then there’s the who. People. Making and accelerating connections with a new audience, from the smallest Fediverse server right through to Threads. Many of the established influencers in the Fediverse have been here for years, or came in the big migration at then end of 2022. That’s when they picked up all their followers. Starting now isn’t so easy. The risk is that federating your website or blog, you just pick up a small handful of followers, with limited engagement.
That’s where Patchwork channels come in. Turning quality content into meaningful connections.
And they’re two way. Bringing Fediverse content into the organisation, as well as broadcasting it out. Connecting people. The next technical challenge is hooking channels up with the established tools in organisations.
Leveraging all we’ve learnt at Newsmast, the new Patchwork architecture has taken us deep into how the Fediverse works - and what we can add.
Now we’re taking a step back, turning the world upside down, and working out how we can engage with organisations and creators. We’re not selling technology and we’re not marketing products.
We want to bring organisations and content creators into the Fediverse, step by step.
For Newsmast and Patchwork, the Fediverse isn’t just one small social network among many. It’s a story that’s just beginning, which organisations and creators need to join:
“a secret new internet…a paradise to which we may all yet escape.”
