Start Direct Social Publishing Today – the real meaning of Mastodon

@ElonJet grounded. Creator funds cut. TikTok banned (maybe). Algorithms changed (again and again).

Social networks and discovery platforms depend on the work of highly motivated creators, influencers, brands, and advertisers.

But those creators and their needs are barely considered. If anything, creators are treated like Content Kleenex – to used as convenient and thrown away. Easily replaced by another one seeking fame, followers, and fans.

Success is your problem.

Get off the hamster wheel and start owning your social feed. Start directly publishing your social content into the open social Fediverse.

What is the Fediverse?

The turmoil at Twitter has made Mastodon a bit famous.

But while Mastodon looks like a social network with an Open Source twist… that isn’t the magic.

The magic is the Fediverse and ActivityPub.

The ActivityPub protocol allows anyone to publish and send content to their Fediverse followers and those followers to share and amplify that content.

… and the Fediverse includes Mastodon, but it also includes a number of other open social networks. PeerTube (video), Funkwhale (audio), Pixelfed (images), and GNUSocial, Friendica, Hubzilla, Misskey, diaspora, Pleroma, and, most interestingly…

You.

All you need is a user address on a server:

@you@your-fediversehome

Direct Social Publishing

Even better, you don’t need to actually use any of these networks or their software (though you can always set up a server just for you). You can connect with your own platform. There are WordPress and Drupal plugins to connect you to the Fediverse. You can roll your own with 493 (and counting as of today) Github projects in various flavors.

And, if you are a bit careful, your content will be viewable by virtually any user using any of these open social platforms within the Fediverse.

Your content will be delivered to the primary time-stamped feed of your followers.

No algorithm to game.

And you are just one click away from adding more followers (no cutting and pasting an RSS feed or entering a mail address in a form).

Don’t Forget Direct Messaging

There is even a cherry on top….Direct messaging.

Though immature, there is a direct messaging feature within Mastodon (at least) that allows you to send messages to individuals… another, stable direct connection to your community.

The Fediverse Potential

The key to social network platforms is the size of their user base and the Fediverse is growing:

7.3 million accounts

3.9 million active users

(as of 11/28/2022)

And every stumble of a corporate social platform adds users, creators, developers, and business attention.

If creators moved to directly publish their content to the Fediverse, this trend would only accelerate. Today, the tools and support to build a business in the Fediverse are pretty immature, but that will change with the growth of the platform.

Don’t wait.

Resources

https://fediverse.party/ – Fediverse Main Page with current metrics and links to the different current platforms and selected instances.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ – WordPress ActivityPub plugin. There are several related plugins. I would not be surprised if there are other plugins coming from other providers.

https://www.drupal.org/project/activitypub – Drupal ActivityPub plugin.

https://github.com/search?q=activitypub – List of ActivityPub pr

https://gizmodo.com/mastodon-how-to-dm-send-messages-twitter-1849759852 – article on sending DMs in Matodon.