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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bluesky | Open source | 2021-10-21 | social network | MIT | own TOS | 19 | Yes |
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 | |
Threads | Meta | 2023-07-05 | microblogging | Proprietary | own TOS | 31 | 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 Corporation | 2009-08 | microblogging | Proprietary | own TOS | Yes | No | |
Viva Engage | 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] |
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 |
BitlBee is a cross-platform IRC instant messaging gateway, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
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 X (Twitter), Threads, Tumblr, Mastodon, Bluesky and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.
identi.ca is 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 microblogging social networking service that implements the OStatus and ActivityPub standards for interoperability between installations. While offering similar functionality to social networks such as Twitter, GNU social seeks to provide the ability for open and federated communication between different microblogging communities, known as 'instances'. Both enterprises and individuals can install and control their own instances and user data.
OpenMicroBlogging is a deprecated communication protocol that allows different microblogging services to interoperate with each other. It lets the user of one service subscribe to statuses from a user of another service. This enables the creation of a federation of new communities, as an individual or organization of any size can host a service that supports the protocol. OpenMicroBlogging utilizes the OAuth and Yadis protocols and does not depend on any central authority.
Qaiku was a micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter and Jaiku. It allowed users to post short text or picture messages that other users can then post comments on. In comparison to Twitter and Jaiku, Qaiku had a multilingual focus, with all messages marked and searchable based on their language. It was shut down on October 15, 2012.
Reblogging is the mechanism in blogging which allows users to repost the content of another user's post with an indication that the source of the post is another user.
OStatus is an open standard for decentralized social networking, allowing users on one service to send and receive status updates with users from another. The standard describes how a suite of various standards, including Atom, Activity Streams, WebSub, Salmon, and WebFinger, can be used together, which enables different microblogging server implementations to communicate 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.
The following is a comparison of both software and protocols that are used for distributed social networking.
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.
pump.io is a software package containing a social networking service and communication protocol that can be used as a federated social network. Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a follow-up to his previous microblogging software StatusNet and its OStatus protocol. It is designed to be more lightweight and usable for general activity streams instead of the predecessor's focus on microblogging timelines, with its goal being to achieve "most of what people want from a social network".
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.
Mastodon is an open source, self-hosted, social networking service. Mastodon uses the ActivityPub protocol for federation which allows users to communicate between independent Mastodon instances and other ActivityPub compatible services. Mastodon has microblogging features similar to Twitter, and is generally considered to be a part of the Fediverse.
The Fediverse is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
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 a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server (C2S) API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.
Pixelfed is a free and open-source image sharing social network service. The platform uses a decentralized architecture which is roughly comparable to e-mail providers, meaning user data is not stored on one central server. It uses the ActivityPub protocol, allowing users to interact with other social networks within the protocol, such as Mastodon, PeerTube, and Friendica. Pixelfed and other platforms utilizing this protocol are considered to be part of the Fediverse.
Misskey is an open source, federated, social networking service created in 2014 by Japanese software engineer Eiji "syuilo" Shinoda. Misskey uses the ActivityPub protocol for federation, allowing users to interact between independent Misskey instances, and other ActivityPub compatible platforms. Misskey is generally considered to be part of the Fediverse.
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