Substack's open source competitor, Newsletter Platform Ghost, is connected to Fediverse, also known as the open social web. Federated Apps runs on ActivityPub, a protocol that drives apps such as Mastodon, Pixelfed, Threads, Flipboard, and other apps, allowing posts published in one app to be viewed and engaged on other federated platforms.
Ghost said last year it was working on integration with ActivityPub. This allows publishers to share their blog posts with the broader open social web.
The company was hoping the merger would be made public last year. However, this week Ghost has announced the release of its social web beta. This allows sites running on a Ghost Pro subscription to try out the new ActivityPub integration.
The beta feature is still active under development. As the company notes in its help documentation, it is expected to ship in more final state with the Ghost 6.0 release.
Image credit: Ghost
When a Ghost Pro user connects a blog or newsletter to Fediverse, other users on the Open Social Web can follow the handles of their accounts. This handle is a combination of “@index” that represents the publication's homepage, followed by the domain name (@yoursite.com).
Ghost says that users can quickly customize the @index part of the @index @yuresite.com handle.
Federation app users can follow, like, reply, or repost and interact with ghost publisher posts.
To help Ghost Publishers join Fediverse and build their readers, Ghost has also launched a social web leader. Here users can view a “feed” of short-form content shared across Fediverse, including posts from services such as Mastodon and Threads.
In another area called “inboxes,” ghost users can keep up with long-term content, such as articles published in 2023 on Ghost or WordPress, a popular publishing platform integrated with Fediverse.
“Think of an inbox screen like an email inbox. If you follow other publications on the social web, you'll see new articles they publish here,” explains Ghost's Help Page. “Clicking a post opens the inline reader view just inside Ghost. Once you reach the end you will be able to repost or reply.”
Once these two feeds are integrated into Ghost admins, Ghost will allow publishers to post short content directly to Fediverse, helping them build their reputation and follow them on the open social web.
Ghost readers can use the following interactions, replies and likes in the Notifications section: and also warns about interactions such as reposts. Additionally, users can customize their profile page to provide social web accounts, followers and content, as well as previews of both short and long term formats.
The company then wants to deeper integration of users' social web profiles with ghost membership, but for now it works independently of each other. Other feature-appearing features include tools that block, report, and mute people, or add images and media to notes and replies.
There are also some compatible issues with Ghost Reader, especially Meta threads. The company says ghost users can search and search for thread users' profiles, but interactions don't work as threads block them. (The problem lies on the Threads side, and Ghost suggests that users mention that they fix it to Instagram head Adam Mosseri.)
To try out Ghost Social Web Beta, Pro Subscribers head to Ghost Admin, then enable beta in your settings and lab.
Today, Ghost is used in several notable publications, including Casey Newton's Platformer, 404 Media, David Sirota's The Lever, Tangle, Jason Calacanis's Inside, Sfist, and more.