OStatus is an open standard for federated microblogging, allowing users on one website to send and receive status updates with users on another website. [1] The standard describes how a suite of open protocols, including Atom, Activity Streams, WebSub, Salmon, and WebFinger, [2] can be used together, which enables different microblogging server implementations to route status updates between their users back-and-forth, in near real-time.
OStatus federation was first possible between StatusNet installations, such as Status.net and Identi.ca, [3] although Identi.ca later switched to pump.io. [4] As of June 2013, a number of other microblogging applications and content management systems had announced that they intended to implement the standard. [5] That same month, it was announced StatusNet would be merged into the GNU social project, along with Free Social.[16]
Following the first official release of GNU Social, a number of microblogging sites running StatusNet and Free Social began to transition to it. But frustrations with the technology underpinning GNU Social led a number of new server packages that aimed to be compatible with GNU Social using OStatus to shift focus to ActivityPub, including Mastodon (until October 2019), [6] Pleroma, [7] and postActiv.
In January 2012, a W3C Community Group was opened to maintain and further develop the OStatus standard. [8] However, this was eclipsed by the work of the W3C Federated Social Web Working Group, launched in July 2014. [9] This working group focused on creating a newer standard, called ActivityPub, based on the protocols used in pump.io, which has been standardized as a successor to OStatus. [10] [11]
Projects in active development using OStatus for federation.
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 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.
A distributed social network or federated social network is an Internet social networking service that is decentralized and distributed across distinct service providers, such as the Fediverse or the IndieWeb. It consists of multiple social websites, where users of each site communicate with users of any of the involved sites. From a societal perspective, one may compare this concept to that of social media being a public utility.
Activity Streams is an open format specification for activity stream protocols, which are used to syndicate activities taken in social web applications and services, similar to those in Facebook's, Instagram's, and Twitter's.
The tables below compare general and technical information for some notable active microblogging services, and also social network services that have status updates.
WebFinger is a protocol specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF in RFC 7033 that allows for discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI. Information about a person might be discovered via an acct: URI, for example, which is a URI that looks like an email address.
Diaspora is a nonprofit, user-owned, distributed social network. It consists of a group of independently owned nodes which interoperate to form the network. The social network is not owned by any one person or entity, keeping it from being subject to corporate take-overs or advertising. According to its developer, "our distributed design means no big corporation will ever control Diaspora."
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 decentralised, experimental peer-to-peer microblogging program. The system uses end-to-end encryption to safeguard communications. It is based on both BitTorrent- and Bitcoin-like protocols and has been likened to a distributed version of Twitter.
Pump.io is a general-purpose activity streams engine that can be used as a federated social networking protocol which "does most of what people really want from a social network". Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a follow-up to StatusNet; Identi.ca, which was the largest StatusNet service, switched to pump.io in June 2013.
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, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other. ActivityPub, a W3C standard, is the most widely used protocol that powers the fediverse. Users on different websites can send and receive updates from others across the network. Noted fediverse platforms include Mastodon, Lemmy, PeerTube, and Pixelfed.
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.
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.
Mobilizon is an open source software for event planning and group management, launched in October 2020 by Framasoft to offer a free alternative to the platforms of GAFAM. Mobilizon gained much visibility in hacker circles relatively fast, but also soon within cultural scene in Europe and more recently in the mainstream IT media.
