I'll be the moderator for the session on "What's neXt? From Mastodon via ActivityPub to the Fediverse or Social Web" on the PublicSpaces conference next week in Amsterdam!
New: What is Farcaster, and why did a16z value it at 1 billion dollar?
#Farcaster is a decentralised social network that has seen significant growth recently, with currently around 80k daily active users. The network has strong ties with crypto and Ethereum. They got an investment of $150M recently by (among others) a16z.
I take a closer look at how Farcaster works, and why some crypto VCs think its worth a billion dollars.
Neynar announces today that they have raised 11M USD to build a technology stack for social protocols; in their case #Farcaster
Neynar is a development platform for Farcaster. It helps devs build clients, bots, Hubs (relays), as well as provide easy APIs that allow other products to easily add things like 'sign in with Farcaster'.
Correction: the original version stated that the Mostr.pub bridge was used for a spam wave on Bluesky. This is incorrect, a different bridge between Nostr and the fediverse, momostr.pink, was used. Mostr.pub creator Alex Gleason explains that the Mostr.pub bridge has anti-spam filtering that would have prevented such as spam attack.
New: Last Week in #fediverse - ep 69
It's this weeks news, with:
Celebrating the 16th birthday of the fediverse
European Commission sets up their own Mastodon server after the previous fediverse pilot by the EDPS has ended.
@fediversereport Thank you for sharing. It is exciting to see what is happening! I think your point at the end is really worth considering: is #Bluesky and the #ATProto interested in multiple apps or is it merely a vehicle for microblogging? I don't have technical background, but I suspect that the decentralization for BSKY is more for show than practice. Critique #ActivityPub all we like but I do think the commitment to platform diversity is there and is practiced.
There are problems here too. I suspect this is a fundamental issue that decentralised social media hasn’t taken seriously enough. It’s a bit like back and front end people not working together well. Protocol people can be inclined to underestimate the importance of what happens in the client, which IMO is where federation actually happens, as it’s there that platforms and UIs need to get stitched together.
@fediversereport I say no (to me it has to use ActvityPub to be the Fediverse) but classify it as other federated social media. I don’t see it taking off like Threads. See the Skygaze announcement.
The EU Voice pilot that hosted Mastodon and Peertube instance for the EU over the last 2 years will come to an end. The @EU_Commission account will continue to be active and grow their Mastodon presence.
Ghost announces a major push for fediverse support, adding #Activitypub to their posts and building an ActivityPub powered news reader app.