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?
Indeed, that’s an excellent point. Additionally, the fediverse is already an innovation in and of itself.
Yeah most fediverse projects mimic Twitter, reddit, etc. But they all add the key innovation of federation. Just by conforming to ActivityPub, each fediverse project features a key innovation in its respective niche.
I think part of the reason this doesn’t seem as impactful as it could is because federation is still very rudimentary. We are only scratching the surface of the potential that federation theoretically provides. It’s a feature/innovation that becomes more useful the larger the network grows, and the fediverse isn’t large enough yet for that to become apparent.
The problem with this innovation is that federation is hard for people to understand, let alone see the benefits of.
It’s easy to innovate in at least some ways. But innovations will only draw new users if those users can see the benefits of the innovation to them. I’m not sure federation passes this test on its own. So finding other ways to improve the social media experience may be necessary for the fediverse to succeed in replacing corporate sites.