A new project launching today aims to capitalize on the momentum seen within the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which describes interconnected social networking services powered by the ActivityPub protocol. Co-founded by the co-author and current editor of ActivityPub, Evan Prodromou, a new nonprofit organization called the Social Web Foundation will focus on expanding the fediverse, improving ActivityPub and the user experience, informing policymakers, and educating people about the fediverse and how they can participate.
“The fact that Threads has joined the space has made it really interesting for other companies,” Prodromou says. “Threads is bringing a really big audience, as well as big names — like @POTUS is on the fediverse … So that makes this process a lot more interesting for other organizations — both for publishers who want to reach those audiences, as well as for existing social networks who want to have those influencers and celebrities available to their users.”
So this is just about piggy-backing on Threads, not any real support for the principles of open software.
That’s the most famous ActivityPub social just because people don’t know what federation is and that Threads implements it (disabled by default).
All IRL people who know Threads whom I asked what made Threads different from Twitter didn’t know about this feature.
It’s like people can’t get interested in anything unless it has the Big Tech stamp of approval. 🙄
In their favor I can say that none of them are tech savvy and they got to know Threads just because Meta put Threads links and icons all over Instagram (which those people use).
It’s just about marketing. People don’t know about what they don’t hear about, and the wealthier companies can make sure people hear about them. There’s no budget for that with regular Fediverse sites.
And make sure they hear about it in such a way that it seems interesting. The fediverse doesn’t use any basic marketing plan techniques, and enough people are conditioned to them (after a lifetime of growing up surrounded by advertising on television and in their spaces) that anything which doesn’t fit that template scoots right by.
Some people take the initiative to learn things on their own though. I suppose we’re not their target audience however.