I’ve explored a few platforms within the Fediverse, but most of them seem to be inspired by and mimic existing mainstream social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook. While this familiarity can be comforting, I can’t help but wonder if there are any truly innovative and original platforms out there that offer a unique experience.
What makes them unique? How do they reimagine the social media experience?
You must log in or register to comment.
I think the open data projects have a fair potential for innovation. They need some kind of backbone for permanence which would need widespread federation, but they’re a conceptually interesting addition to the Fediverse.
Edit: spelling (“to”, not “YO!”)
Slowly.app? It’s like having a snail mail pen-pal.
https://thirdroom.io is based on matrix, not activitypub, but it’s trying to be some kind of federated 3d world.
https://bonfirenetworks.org/ approach is quite unique, this might be what you are looking for
Maybe https://bonfirenetworks.org ?
This looks so interesting but after reading the homepage I still have no idea what it is. Is it like chatrooms?
At a glance, Misskey and associated forks may appear to be Twitter-clones, but dig a little more and you’ll find they’re a lot more, for better and worse.
The interface is highly customizable, not just with some different colored themes nor a multi-column interface, but that you can stack page elements in columns and set up “antennae” or filters to surface posts including specified keywords and/or hashtags while excluding others via keywords/hashtags as well. There’s also what they call “channels” which I think are sort of like groups or dedicated topics apart from hashtags to post to and discuss whatever the channel topic is.
Oh, and because it seems *key wants to have a little of everything, there’s Pages, which is basically longform blog posting, and some versions include simple games. There’s also options for some other widgets I’ve not mentioned here. It’s genuinely pretty wild compared to the other federated microblogging services with how much flexibility it has and all that it has packed in.
I think the only other federated service I’ve found that’s comparable in flexibility may be Hubzilla, albeit I got the impression it’s less user friendly, but still, very customizable and a lot you could do with it.
I think social media is a solved problem at this point, you’ll need something radical or game changing to actually break through in this market. Combined with the fact that the fediverse is inherently much more difficult to monetize I don’t see many companies taking on that challenge.
FOSS projects might though, but they tend to grow too slow to be disruptive.
If you’re thinking of it in market terms, then it being a “solved problem” should mean that it’s effectively a commodity and nothing radical or game-changing is needed at all to eventually break the monopolies and win all the market share. All that’s needed is to offer the same old thing at a slightly lower price, and wait for people to catch on.
But I disagree; there are plenty of unsolved problems.
https://fediverse.info/explore/projects
There are a few projects that give some idea a new spin. Most of them are about microblogging or alternative platforms for some existing concepts, though.
I will try and make a federated anime tracking website in summer. Not sure if that is unique though.
Like MAL or Anilist?
What part will be federated? Reviews?
I’d be very interested in this
Owncast is rather interesting to me. Self-hosted streaming platform that can use the ActivityPub to publish streaming notifications, if desired.
i think this misses the point of the fediverse… we need to supplant those giant 3rd parties with something less corporate, more co-op.
sure, we can extend functionality and do cool new things while thats happening, but that migration is a big part of the fediverse movement. it needs to be somewhat familiar to those users migrating.
Indeed, that’s an excellent point. Additionally, the fediverse is already an innovation in and of itself.
Yeah most fediverse projects mimic Twitter, reddit, etc. But they all add the key innovation of federation. Just by conforming to ActivityPub, each fediverse project features a key innovation in its respective niche.
I think part of the reason this doesn’t seem as impactful as it could is because federation is still very rudimentary. We are only scratching the surface of the potential that federation theoretically provides. It’s a feature/innovation that becomes more useful the larger the network grows, and the fediverse isn’t large enough yet for that to become apparent.
