The fediverse (a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web publishing (i.e.

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

microblogging Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...

blogging A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

, or

websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...

) and file hosting, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other. On different servers (technically instances), users can create so-called identities. These identities are able to communicate over the boundaries of the instances because the software running on the servers supports one or more

communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniz ...

s that follow an open standard. As an identity on the fediverse, users are able to post text and other media, or to follow posts by other identities. In some cases, users can show or share data (video, audio, text, and other files) publicly or to a selected group of identities, and allow other identities to edit other users' data (such as a calendar or an address book).

History

In 2008, the social network identi.ca was founded by

Evan Prodromou Evan S. Prodromou (born 14 October 1968) is a software developer and open source advocate. His major contributions have been Wikitravel (with Michele Ann Jenkins), Identi.ca, and StatusNet. In 2015, he launched Fuzzy.ai, an artificial intell ...

. He published the software GNU social under a free license ( GNU Affero General Public License, AGPL). It defined the

OStatus OStatus is an open standard for federated microblogging, allowing users on one website to send and receive status updates with users on another website. The standard describes how a suite of open protocols, including Atom, Activity Streams, WebS ...

protocol. Besides the server, identi.ca, there were only few other instances, run by persons for their own use. This changed in 2011–12 when identi.ca switched to another software called

pump.io Pump.io (pronounced "pump eye-oh") is a general-purpose activity streams engine that can be used as a federated social networking protocol which "does most of what people really want from a social network". Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a fo ...

. Several new GNU social instances were created. At the same time as GNU social, other projects like

Friendica Friendica (formerly Friendika, originally Mistpark) is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers. Features Friendi ...

, Hubzilla,

Mastodon A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the ...

, and

Pleroma Pleroma ( grc-koi, πλήρωμα, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers. It is used in Christian theological contexts, especially in Gnosticism. The term also appears in the Epistle to the Colossians, which is tr ...

integrated the OStatus protocol, thus extending the fediverse (though Mastodon and Pleroma have since dropped OStatus in favor of ActivityPub). In the meantime, other communication protocols evolved which were integrated to different degrees into the software packages. In January 2018, the W3C presented the

ActivityPub ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol based on Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol. It provides a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for de ...

protocol, aiming to improve the interoperability between the different software packages run on a wide network of servers. , this protocol was supported by thirteen software packages (see table below), and was the dominant protocol used in the Fediverse.

Communication protocols used in the fediverse

These

s, which implement open standards, are used in the fediverse: *

* Diaspora Network *

* Zot & Zot/6

Fediverse software packages

The software packages used in the fediverse are FOSS. Some of them vaguely resemble Twitter in style (for example,

, Misskey, GNU social, and Pleroma, which are similar in their

function), while others include more communication and transaction options that are instead comparable to

Google+ Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus; sometimes called G+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google ...

or Facebook (such as is the case with

and Hubzilla). The following software packages span the fediverse by using the listed communication protocols:

User statistics

A number of developers publish live statistics about the fediverse on monitoring sites like the-federation.info. The statistics on these sites are an indication of usage levels, not a complete record, as they can only aggregate data from instances that use the NodeInfo protocol to publish usage statistics. There is no guarantee that all instances are known to these sites, and some instances may disable NodeInfo, or use software that hasn't implemented it. Some of these sites include data from any federated software that publishes it using NodeInfo, not just fediverse software.

References

External links

Fediverse Observer
– map, statistics, software overview
Fediverse Party
– history, thematic groups, software overview
FediDB
– A website which shows information about different Fediverse softwares and their stats
Fediverse history
– point list of key events with sources () {{Fediverse Microblogging Free software Social networks 2008 introductions