The fediverse — the name for the social network made up of interconnected servers like Mastodon and others — got another boost of legitimacy Tuesday as the @Potus (President of the United States) account on Instagram threads shared his first federal Position. The account run by Biden’s team posted a message about the president’s support for reproductive freedom on Threads, Meta’s up-and-coming Twitter/X competitor.
Soon after, Threads users noticed that his post had the Threads fediverse sharing logo — a circular shape that looks like planets orbiting a star, which gives a sense of the interconnected universe that is the fediverse.
Image Credits: Thread screenshot
While many consumers may not be familiar with the terminology yet, fediverse is a concept that is shaping up to become a more important part of the future of social networking in the coming months, especially given the fact that Meta is embracing the ActivityPub technology and underlying protocol.
In short, the term refers to interconnected servers that run social networks and can all talk to each other. Mastodon, an open-source Twitter-like posting service, is a prominent member of the fediverse, as are other platforms such as video sharing service PeerTube, Instagram alternative Pixelfed, discussion forum software company Lemmy, publishing platform WriteFreely and others .
Combined, these services (excluding Threads) make up a “social web” that includes a total of 9.9 million users, approximately 1.08 million of which are active on a monthly basis. Threads has over 130 million monthly active users as of Meta’s most recent earnings, quickly making it one of the largest hubs in the federated market.
When Meta introduced Threads, its text-focused competitor to Twitter/X, the company said it planned to integrate the app so that users on Mastodon and other networks could see and reply to its users’ posts Threads.
Late last year, Threads began testing this integration, and in March, it opened up fediverse sharing to Threads users in beta. This feature is not yet fully released and still has some limitations. For example, currently Threads users can’t see who has replied to or liked their posts from other servers, and they can’t share their posts with polls. But these are features that will come in the future.
Despite the lack of this functionality, @Potus’ account embracing federated sharing means Biden’s posts will have a wider reach, as they can be seen by users who aren’t already on Threads, X or other non-federated apps of social network.
