I was recently checking out the new fediverse.info (you should check it out, btw, it’s very well put together), and was struck by something as I was going through. Under the apps section, where users are prompted to pick an app, there is the question: “What do you want to do?”. It’s not a bad question, based on how the fediverse is structured. Each app has a niche, and so you need to pick an app based on the type of interaction you want to have.
However, what I noticed is that there is no “General” category. I.e., sites that do multiple of these things well. Sure, some sites might have some type of event functionality, and you can share images/videos on mastodon, lemmy and other microblogging/forum sites, but none of it is done to a standard that would make it your go to for any of those types of functions. So, it is necessary to say “what do you want to do” in order to guide people to the site that specializes in what they want.
Yet, this being the fediverse, all of these platforms can talk to each other. So does it have to be that way? Is there a way that we could move towards a more unified and multifunctional fediverse, vs a series of islands that each have different functionalities? What would that look like, and are there any platforms out there that are doing a more unified fediverse experience, specifically having a lot of different functionality/content types in one site/app?
I know people hate facebook comparisons, but I’m thinking of the level of different content/functionality that facebook has, posts, audience control, private/group messaging, groups, marketplace, events. This is the standard that is expected for social media these days. Can the fediverse live up to that expectation?
I’m not sure if that’s how internet platforms work as of today. It’d be a nice idea, for sure. And I think we have some all-in-one platforms. Or at least platforms who aspire to do a lot of different things. But other than that, I think it’s kinda the same situation in the commercial internet. X does shorter public messages, Reddit does threaded discussions. YouTube does longer videos. Instagram does enless scrolling through short clips and images… And group chat rooms will be on Discord or WhatsApp. Classified ads and garage sales will be yet another platform… There’s some blurry lines, for example YouTube can do image stories. But it’s designed in a weird way and not really mainstream. They do short clips but you kinda switch modes when doing that and all younger people rarher stay on Instagram and TikTok anyway. People announce their events on Instagram all the time but it doesn’t specifically help with the use-case. One thing they all have in common is some vaguely similar commenting system. It’s social media after all. But I think they all focus on a specific subset of things. I know Elon Musk has some dream of providing an everything-app. But he can’t do it either.
I wonder what average people even like. I kinda liked the early idea behind social media platforms like Facebook. You could send memes there, talk to friends or strangers, sell old stuff, talk about your pets in some group. or whatever. Maybe there’s some space for one of our platforms which isn’t occupied by a lot of competing platforms…