As the open social web grows, a new nonprofit looks to expand the ‘fediverse’
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.
Explains Prodromou, the group felt the time was right for such an effort, given that Meta recently adopted ActivityPub for its latest app, Threads, an X competitor built by Meta’s Instagram team. Thanks to the tech giant’s involvement, there are now over 200 million new potential fediverse users, dwarfing the adoption of other popular federated apps, like Mastodon, which today claims around 7.49 million registered users and under a million monthly actives.
“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.”
