Fediverse
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe". It is a common, informal name for a somewhat broad federation of social network servers whose main purpose is microblogging, the sharing of short, public messages. By running social network software that supports a standard set of protocols called OStatus, independently run servers can connect to the Fediverse[1], allowing its users to follow and receive short messages from each other, regardless of which particular OStatus server implementation they are running.
The Fediverse is built on Free Software. Some of its social networks are vaguely Twitter-ish in style (for example Mastodon, or GNU Social, similar in activities and their microblogging function), while other federated platforms include more communication and transaction options that are instead comparable to Google+ or Facebook (such as is the case with Friendica).
Members of the Fediverse
Social networking software that can currently connect to the Fediverse includes
- Friendica (formerly Mistpark)
- GNU social (formerly StatusNet, until 2013)
- Hubzilla[2]
- Mastodon
- Pleroma[3]
- PostActiv (fork of GNU Social)[4]
- Misskey