I’ve explored a few platforms within the Fediverse, but most of them seem to be inspired by and mimic existing mainstream social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook. While this familiarity can be comforting, I can’t help but wonder if there are any truly innovative and original platforms out there that offer a unique experience.

What makes them unique? How do they reimagine the social media experience?

  • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    7 months ago

    At a glance, Misskey and associated forks may appear to be Twitter-clones, but dig a little more and you’ll find they’re a lot more, for better and worse.

    The interface is highly customizable, not just with some different colored themes nor a multi-column interface, but that you can stack page elements in columns and set up “antennae” or filters to surface posts including specified keywords and/or hashtags while excluding others via keywords/hashtags as well. There’s also what they call “channels” which I think are sort of like groups or dedicated topics apart from hashtags to post to and discuss whatever the channel topic is.

    Oh, and because it seems *key wants to have a little of everything, there’s Pages, which is basically longform blog posting, and some versions include simple games. There’s also options for some other widgets I’ve not mentioned here. It’s genuinely pretty wild compared to the other federated microblogging services with how much flexibility it has and all that it has packed in.

    I think the only other federated service I’ve found that’s comparable in flexibility may be Hubzilla, albeit I got the impression it’s less user friendly, but still, very customizable and a lot you could do with it.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    7 months ago

    If Ghost fulfil their wish to get payments and subscriptions working over the protocol then that would count. They said they think they can in their recent announcement. But then it seems they may have crypto in mind for it.

  • kernelle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    7 months ago

    I think social media is a solved problem at this point, you’ll need something radical or game changing to actually break through in this market. Combined with the fact that the fediverse is inherently much more difficult to monetize I don’t see many companies taking on that challenge.

    FOSS projects might though, but they tend to grow too slow to be disruptive.

    • kbal@fedia.io
      5·
      7 months ago

      If you’re thinking of it in market terms, then it being a “solved problem” should mean that it’s effectively a commodity and nothing radical or game-changing is needed at all to eventually break the monopolies and win all the market share. All that’s needed is to offer the same old thing at a slightly lower price, and wait for people to catch on.

      But I disagree; there are plenty of unsolved problems.

      • kernelle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        I’m thinking the same way smartphones are solved where only small increments of improvement happen. Radical changes happenen, like folding phones or the rise of Tiktok. Some have long lasting problems like the former, but the latter managed to pick a fight with the giants and come out on top.

        Back to market terms, they’re mature but new players have proven to disrupt the market. When the general public start caring about privacy, federated social media will rise. Seeing how that is quite a politicised thing, progress will be slow. I’d love to be proven wrong though.

  • asudox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    7 months ago

    I will try and make a federated anime tracking website in summer. Not sure if that is unique though.

  • Jupiter Rowland@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    Late, but still: I dare say that what Mike Macgirvin has done.

    Mistpark/Friendika/Friendica looks like and is marketed as a Facebook alternative. But it comes with extra features on top like a built-in file storage, and its actual killer feature has always been that it federates with everything that moves.

    Red a.k.a. the Red Matrix used to handle much like Friendica on the surface, but it introduced nomadic identity and permissions as early as 2012.

    Hubzilla, into which the Red Matrix was turned in 2015, is probably the most powerful of all Fediverse projects. It was the first Fediverse project to implement ActivityPub, two months before Mastodon. And it was the first nomadic one to actually kind of take off.

    Finally, the latest offspring of 14 years (plus two days) of development since Mistpark is the streams repository which isn’t as feature-heavy as Hubzilla, but the most innovative one, and it’s constantly evolving. It will be there first that nomadic identity and even permissions beyond what Hubzilla has to offer will be implemented in ActivityPub. And it’s likely that this will happen this year.