There’s a new playbook being written right now when it comes to the future of social media. The early-mover advantage is still in effect, and there’s a lot to figure out. Gone are opaque algorithms and the whims of any single company.
The fediverse represents a chance for quality journalism to shine again.
We talked to two leaders at fedi-forward publications — @TheConversationUS's @BostonAbrams, and @404mediaco's @jasonkoebler — about why they’re investing in the open social web, what they’ve learned so far, and their advice for other publishers just getting started.
We'd love to get the #NewstodonFriday hashtag going again. This, as far as we can remember, was started by @gbhnews, and is an initiative to feature work from newsrooms that have an active presence in the #fediverse
If you're a news organization, share your handle and your favorite story of the week in the comments to this! And if there's a publication in the fediverse that you love, let us know about that in the comments too.
We ran a webinar on April 18 for creators and curators who are curious about the fediverse, have a federated Flipboard account, and don't know what to do next. Here's a link to the recording, plus the TL;DR bullet points if you don't have time to watch it.
Yesterday, we announced our federation of 400 Flipboard curators and curators, so today, we're highlighting just a few you can follow on subjects like food, leadership, basketball, and sustainable food systems.
Allen Westly, technology enthusiast, cybersecurity practitioner, and diversity advocate — @West1118
Brian Fanzo, digital futurist, podcaster and ADHD advocate — @iSocialFanz
Camille Styles, lifestyle writer passionate about plant-based cooking and design and beauty — @CamilleStyles
Christie Vanover, champion pitmaster and creator of Girls Can Grill — @GirlsCanGrill
Daniel Hakimi, style curator and men’s fashion writer — @DanHakimi
Darryl Benjamin, educator and advocate for sustainable food systems — @Kafkaturtle
Janette Speyer, professional marketer passionate about cooking, travel, fashion and connecting the Flipboard community — @JanetteSpeyer
Jennifer Petoff, travel writer and creator of Sidewalk Safari — @sidewalksafari
Jessica Bethel, Los Angeles-based photographer — @4eyedgirl
Ken Yeung, journalist and author of "The AI Economy" newsletter — @thekenyeung
Louisa Moje, pharmacist, fashionista and foodie — @foodpluswords_
Marco Secchi, visual storyteller and photographer — @msecchi
Markus Weber, sustainable agriculture and agtech — @Maakusi
Maurizo Leo, bestselling cookbook author and creator of The Perfect Loaf — @theperfectloaf
Pete Gleason, PhD, professor, psychologist and innovator — @pgleason
Phil McKinney, technologist, author and podcaster — @philmckinney
Scott Kleinberg, OG Flipboarder and proud Apple fanboy — @scottkleinberg
Scott Monty, business leader, executive coach and podcaster — @scottmonty
Tayo Oredola, food writer and creator of Low Carb Africa — @lowcarbafrica
WBB Daily — curator who specializes in women’s basketball, passionate about growing the game — @smrice
Wesley Fryer, STEM educator and media literacy advocate — @wfryer
In December, we started to federate the accounts of some Flipboard publishers and in February, we introduced Magazines to the fediverse. Now, we’re taking two important steps: federating the accounts of 400 creators and expert curators; and enabling two-way communication so that new followers and fediverse activity are visible and actionable in the Flipboard app.
To learn more about this, take a look at our blogpost:
Thanks so much to everyone who has given feedback on what we’ve done so far. We welcome your thoughts and comments as we continue on our journey to fully federate Flipboard.
Last month, Meta's Threads took its first step into the fediverse. @quillmatiq, aka @quillmatiq took that as his cue to experiment with how his Threads feed would look like on Mastodon. Here's what he discovered about organizing the chaos, different clients (hello @phanpy) and whether he'll cut the Threads cord when federation is complete.
What does it mean to federate your Flipboard profile? In the simplest terms, it means that whatever you curate (aka share) on Flipboard will be "syndicated" out to the fediverse with no extra effort. @miaq tests it out and breaks it down.
"As Flipboard’s head of creator community, I’m often explaining WTF the fediverse is and trying to convince creators to set up camp there. (Flipboard believes this is the future of social media.)," writes @miaq in the latest edition of our Fedi Curious newsletter. "If I’m lucky, the person is open to it, able to figure out how to get set up, and gives it a try. But more often than not, I get the digital equivalent of a blank stare and a groan — not another social platform?!" Here's her post about why creators should pay attention to what's happening here, and why the fediverse is not the same as all those other platforms.
Some prospective or new users may be turned off by unsolicited replies.
Mastodon is experimenting with a feature to dissuade people from writing them to any user in the first place.
"While we’re exploring multiple different avenues to tackle this issue, the idea we’re experimenting with today is simply reminding people when they’re about to respond to a stranger. We also believe that by showing a bit of information about the person you’re about to talk to, we can prevent some awkward situations, such as explaining something to an expert in a given field."
Does anyone on #SFBA have experience writing opinion pieces for local news papers? The admin team is about to attempt a draft explaining SFBA and the fediverse to a local paper audience. Ideally, in a way it could be customized to each area of the bay! I’d love to invite our neighbors to join us here 🎉
Also, I’d love to hear about your local paper so I can include them 📰 I would be super excited if you want to write it for your paper too! I’d greatly prefer to have a recommendation come from someone in the community than one of the admin team for the website 😅
Does anyone on #SFBA have experience writing opinion pieces for local news papers? The admin team is about to attempt a draft explaining SFBA and the fediverse to a local paper audience. Ideally, in a way it could be customized to each area of the bay! I’d love to invite our neighbors to join us here 🎉
Also, I’d love to hear about your local paper so I can include them too 📰 I would be super excited if you want to write it for your paper too! I’d greatly prefer to have a recommendation come from someone in the community than one of the admin team for the website 😅
As Twitter continues to experience issues (ideological and technical), people will be looking for a place to go. Would you support instances purchasing small ad campaigns on Twitter to let users know about mastodon as an alternative?
I’d love to read more about your opinion in the comments, too!
I agree with @gruber. Not federating is certainly a choice admins can make, but it's unlikely to have an impact considering that Threads is being bootstrapped off the Instagram social graph.
Would you rather keep the fediverse restricted to its current population of ~8M people or scale it to ~2.35B+?
@mastodonmigration@tchambers
It looks interesting, but what does it do?
First thing the web site does is ask me to sign in to my Mastodon account.
Second thing is, my Mastodon instance asks me if I want to authorize SpreadMastodon.org for full access to my account.
No explanation of what is going to happen or what is intended.
I'm not saying Yes if the website isn't even going to give me the courtesy of telling me what is intended, other than: "Do this! It'll be really cool!" #SpreadMastodon
Okay, I tried it, and it basically goes through about 5 web pages, each one a step to set up your Mastodon account. It shows a whole bunch of suggested accounts and tags to follow. You can Select All, or choose categories like "Science" or "News" to follow, which checks/unchecked a bunch of accounts/tags for that category, and you can fine-tune it further if you like.
Very well done! But do explain your intent before requesting access, please.
One reason I believe it's more important to emphasize #SpreadFediverse over #SpreadMastodon is because spreading the Fediverse partially addresses the problem of Mastodon churn.
Understand that even if #Mastodon was the best, most intuitive service ever made, there will always be churn because somebody won't like it -- and that's okay.
But when people churn, it's far better for people to move elsewhere on the Fediverse than return to Big Social.
This is a big reason why I'm running https://calckey.social, and why I'm also trying to make it easier for people to start up their own servers through #SpaceHost.
Oh, and it's definitely important that we share news about the greater Fediverse so that churning Mastodon users realize that they have options.
OK the backlash is building over this mess... we need the people PUSHING it to, stop, take a breath, read up, and then talk to the people commenting and rebalance the path, it's a good path. But currently it is pushing mess, the resulting stink from this puts people off our friendly #openweb space.
It's easy to get a consensus on a better path for this, @dimitrisk has already put one forward that works.
@spreadmastodon You need to either rename yourself SpreadMastodonDotSocial or start pointing people to more than your single mega-instance. Nobody in good faith can recommend people join it.
@aral@dimitrisk Something to keep in mind is fighting a default. Ppl coming in from the bigbox socials were given a default, from minute one, that they dont have to pick a server. And -some- of them CAN be convinced to. But some were shown they "dont have to", and wont no matter how it is presented to them. I think those ppl will either take a 1 min answer or not choose at all.
That easy answer should not be a mega server. But some users will be easy-answer or "no". #SpreadMastodon
@aral@dimitrisk
Much like I think ppl should have the option of server, & be informed on their choice; I think they need the option of some easy-quick choice, as well as the option to chose a server. And be informed of what the choice between -those two- options mean.
This allows ppl working with that default to -start- questioning it. But also start masto at all. Once they have questioned it long enough, they would know there is are servers to choose from. When ready. #SpreadMastodon