The speed with which media companies are announcing moves into the fediverse is accelerating, with Flipboard and Mozilla among the latest to signal their plans to support federation protocols. While most consumers are shrugging over the idea of decentralized social networks, the actual benefits will be evident once the protocols are implemented and people are able to take advantage of them. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel break down what the fediverse is, discuss the competing protocols, and explain what it means for users and social media managers.

Links from this episode:

• Flipboard is pivoting to ActivityPub and the fediverse
• Flipboard Begins to Federate
• Can ActivityPub save the internet?
• Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) on Threads
• Tom Warren (@tomwarrenuk) on Threads
• Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future
• X’s rivals, from Threads to Bluesky, are seizing the moment to make decentralized social media the new norm and fill the Twitter vacuum
• Tumblr’s ‘fediverse’ integration is still being worked on, says owner and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg

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The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request the credentials in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Neville’s Asides blog is also available.

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