The tables below compare general and technical information for some notable active microblogging services, and also social network services that have status updates.
Service | Owner | Launched | Primary service | Software license | Content license | Multilingual | Ad-free |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Diaspora | Open source | 2010-11 | social network | AGPLv3-or-later [1] | AGPLv3 | 31 [2] | Yes |
Meta [3] | 2004-02-04 | social network | Proprietary | own TOS | 112 | No | |
Friendica | Open source | 2010-07 | social network | AGPLv3-or-later | own TOS | Yes | Yes |
GNU social | Open source | 2010-03-03 | microblogging | AGPLv3-or-later [4] | CC BY 3.0 | 70 [5] | Yes |
identi.ca | Open source | 2008-07-02 [6] | microblogging | Apache v2 (pump.io) | CC BY 3.0 | Yes | Yes |
Mastodon | Open source | 2016-10 [7] | microblogging | AGPLv3-or-later [8] | own TOS | 93 [9] | Yes |
Micro.blog | Riverfold Software | 2017-04-24 | microblogging | Mixed [10] [11] | Mixed | Yes | Yes |
Movim | Open source | 2011-03 | social network | AGPLv3-or-later [12] [13] | AGPLv3 | 59 [14] | Yes |
Steam community | Valve Corporation | 2003-09-12 | Proprietary | own TOS | 28 [15] | Yes | |
Tout | Tout | 2010-04 [16] | microblogging | Proprietary | own TOS | Yes | Yes |
Tumblr | Automattic | 2007 | microblogging | Proprietary | own TOS | Yes | No |
Twister | Open source | 2013-12-30 | microblogging | MIT & BSD | own TOS | 2:en,ru | Yes |
Sina Weibo | Sina Corporation | 2009-08 | microblogging | Proprietary | own TOS | Yes | No |
Yammer | Yammer, Inc. | 2008-09 [17] | microblogging | Proprietary | own TOS | Yes | Yes |
X (Twitter) | X Corp. [18] | 2006-08 | microblogging | Proprietary | own TOS | Yes | No |
An overview of integral features. Extras may be provided by third party applications/services, but are not listed here.
Service | Tagging [Note 1] | Groups | Conversation [Note 2] | Private [Note 3] | Private following list | RSS | Atom | Bookmarklet |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | No [19] | No | No | |
Friendica | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes [20] |
GNU social | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes [21] |
Mastodon | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes [22] |
Micro.blog | Yes | No | Yes | No | ? | Yes | No | No |
Movim | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Steam community | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? |
Tumblr | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes [23] [24] |
Sina Weibo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
X (Twitter) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No [25] | No [25] | Yes [26] |
Communication methods supported by the services. Extras may be provided by third party applications/services, but are not listed here.
Service | Post via | Read via | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Web | XMPP | SMS | API | Micropub | Web | XMPP | SMS | API | Feed | ActivityPub | |||
Yes | No | Yes [27] | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes [28] | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Friendica | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
GNU social | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Mastodon | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Micro.blog | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes [29] | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Movim | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
X (Twitter) | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the major reason for their popularity. Some popular social networks such as Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr, Koo, and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.
identi.ca was a free and open-source social networking and blogging service based on the pump.io software, using the Activity Streams protocol. Identi.ca stopped accepting new registrations in 2013, but continues to operate alongside several other pump.io-based hosts provided by E14N which continue to accept new registrations.
GNU social is a free and open source software microblogging server written in PHP that implements the OStatus standard for interoperation between installations. While offering functionality similar to Twitter, GNU social seeks to provide the potential for open, inter-service, and distributed communications between microblogging communities. Enterprises and individuals can install and control their own services and data.
OpenMicroBlogging is a deprecated protocol that allows different microblogging services to inter-operate. It lets the user of one service subscribe to notices by a user of another service. This enables a federation of new communities, as potentially an organization of any size can host a service. OpenMicroBlogging utilizes the OAuth and Yadis protocols and does not depend on any central authority.
GitHub, Inc. is a developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage and share their code. It uses Git software, providing the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.
Transifex is a globalization management system (GMS), a proprietary, web-based translation platform. It targets technical projects with frequently updated content, such as software, documentation, and websites, and encourages the automation of the localization workflow by integrating with common developer tools.
OStatus is an open standard for federated microblogging, allowing users on one website to send and receive status updates with users on another website. The standard describes how a suite of open protocols, including Atom, Activity Streams, WebSub, Salmon, and WebFinger, can be used together, which enables different microblogging server implementations to route status updates between their users back-and-forth, in near real-time.
Friendica is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers.
Distributed social network projects generally develop software, protocols, or both.
Evan S. Prodromou is a software developer and open source advocate. He is a co-editor of ActivityPub, the W3C standard for decentralized social networking used by platforms such as Mastodon.
Twister is a decentralized, experimental peer-to-peer microblogging program which uses end-to-end encryption to safeguard communications. Based on BitTorrent- and Bitcoin-like protocols, it has been likened to a distributed version of Twitter.
Movim is a distributed social network built on top of XMPP, a popular open standards communication protocol. Movim is a free and open source software licensed under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license. It can be accessed using existing XMPP clients and Jabber accounts.
Citra is a free and open-source emulator of the handheld Nintendo 3DS for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. Citra's name is derived from CTR, which is the model name of the original 3DS. Citra can run many homebrew games and commercial games.
Mastodon is a free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to Twitter, which are offered by a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances or servers, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, and content moderation policies.
The fediverse is an ensemble of social networks which can communicate with each other, while remaining independent platforms. Users on different social networks and websites can send and receive updates from others across the network.
Micro.blog is a microblogging and social networking service created by Manton Reece. It is the first large multi-user social media service to support the Webmention and Micropub standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium, and is part of the Fediverse, supporting ActivityPub.
ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol based on Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol. It provides a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content.
Pixelfed is a free and open-source image sharing social network service. It is decentralized, therefore user data is not stored on a central server, unlike other platforms. Pixelfed uses the ActivityPub protocol which allows users to interact with other social networks within the protocol, such as Mastodon, PeerTube, and Friendica. Using this protocol makes Pixelfed a part of the Fediverse. The network is made up of several independent sites that communicate with one another, which is roughly comparable to e-mail providers. The parties involved do not all have to be registered with the same provider, but can still communicate with each other. Thus, users are able to sign up on any server and follow others on the other instances.
Eugen Rochko is a Russian-born German software developer, best known as the creator of Mastodon, a decentralized open-source social networking platform consisting of a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, and moderation policies.
...under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
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