The Fediverse is a federated social-media network.

The Fediverse is to social-media what the Internet is to computer-networks. I.e., just like the Internet is a network of networks, the Fediverse is a network of social-media networks.

Fediverse Simile

What the Fediverse is is more obvious once you start using it, but —

This is a simile that helps some people understand what the Fediverse is —

The Fediverse is like e-mail, but where you posts are public (rather than private like they are with e-mail).

Mastodon

Mastodon is the most well-known part of the Fediverse — due to attention it has been getting from news media and TV.

Mastodon is not a social-media network per se. Mastodon is software that anyone can use to create their own social-media network. I.e., there are many many Mastodon-based social-media networks.

As of 2023, there are tens of thousands of social-media networks that are using the Mastodon software. And that number has been predicted to grow to the hundreds of thousands in the near future!

But what is different between this wave of social-media networks and the previous wave of social-media networks is — these thousands and thousands of Mastodon based social-media networks federate.

federation (noun): any group formed from separate entities or objects.

More Fediverse

But Mastodon based social-media networks don't just federate with other Mastodon based social-media networks — they federate with any software that "speaks" the language of the Fediverse — i.e., ActivityPub and others. These other Fediverse software includes:

• akkoma
• bookwyrm
• castopod
• firefish (previously called “calckey”)
• forgejo
• friendica
• funkwhale
• gitea
• gnu social
• gotosocial
• greatape
• guppe
• kbin
• lemmy
• misskey
• mobilizon
• nextcloud
• owncast
• peertube
• pixelfed
• pleroma
• plume
• postfreely
• postmarks
• socialhome
• writefreely
• and more!

At last count there are about 40 different Fediverse software. Many of them provide a very different experience from the others.

• akkoma, mastodon, firefish, pleroma and others are Twitter-like.
• pixelfed is Instagram-like.
• peertube is YouTube-like.
• friendica and others are Facebook-like.
• lemmy and others are Reddit-like.
• nextcloud is Google Drive-like.
• owncast is Twitch-like.
• forgejo and gitea are GitHub-like.
• Etc.

Yet, despite all these different user-experiences all these different social-media networks federate.

Etymology of ‘Fediverse’

The word “Fediverse” is a combination of (a portmanteau of) the words “federation” and “universe”, or “federated” and “universe”.