The Fediverse — the name for a social network made up of interconnected servers such as Mastodon — received further legitimacy on Tuesday after the @Potus (President of the United States) account on an Instagram thread shared the first federation post. I just got it. An account run by Biden's team published a message about the president's support for reproductive freedom on Threads, a high-profile Twitter/X competitor of Meta.
Soon after, the Threads user noticed that his posts were showing Threads' Fediverse sharing logo. The logo is circular, resembling a planet orbiting a star, giving a sense of the interconnected universe that makes up the Fediverse.
Image credit: Thread screenshot
While many consumers may not know the term yet, the Fediverse is expected to expand in the coming months, especially considering Meta's adoption of this technology and its underlying ActivityPub protocol. It's an idea that's becoming a more prominent part of the future of social networking.
In other words, the term refers to interconnected servers running a social network that can communicate with each other. Mastodon, an open-source Twitter-like posting service, is a prominent member of the Fediverse, along with other platforms such as video-sharing service PeerTube, Instagram alternative Pixelfed, discussion forum software company Lemmy, and publishing platform WriteFreely.
Together, these services (excluding threads) make up a “social web” of 9.9 million users, approximately 1.08 million of whom are active each month. As of Meta's latest earnings, Threads has over 130 million monthly active users and will soon become one of the largest nodes in the Fediverse.
When Meta introduced Threads, a text-centric Twitter/X competitor, the company said it planned to integrate its apps so that users on Mastodon and other networks could see and respond to posts by Threads users. Stated.
Late last year, Threads began testing its integration, and in March rolled out fediverse sharing in beta to Threads users. This feature has not yet been fully rolled out and has some limitations. For example, currently Threads users cannot see who has replied to or liked their posts from other servers, or share their posts in votes. However, these are features coming in the future.
Despite the lack of this feature, the @Potus account's use of federated sharing means that users who don't yet use Threads, X, or other non-federated social apps will still see Biden's posts. This means Biden's posts will reach a wider audience.