Brian Johnson

As Fediverse platforms such as Mastodon get more attention, there are suggestions that companies, governments, organizations should “join Mastodon” or even create their own “Mastodon instance.”

Yeah, that would be good, but think bigger – much bigger. Add ActivityPub support to your existing web site. This provides endless opportunities.

Many sites today still support RSS (Really Simple Syndication). With an RSS feed reader, you can subscribe to the organization's web site and when a new article is published, you see it in your RSS feed reader. Why not use ActivityPub in the same way? With ActivityPub support, someone on Mastodon or Frendica could “Follow” your organization. If you are a news site, a post would appear in Mastodon whenever a new article appears on your web site. If you support feedback, a Mastodon “reply” would show up as a comment.

Are you a local government? You may have RSS enabled articles today for meetings, police reports, fire reports, emergency notifications, etc. Permit someone on Mastodon to “follow” those reports the same way you would for RSS.

Of course, you can also include full blogging, microbloging, image and video support so that your staff can interact with the Fediverse just as they would with Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and more.

And by doing it this way, all of the data is on your own server, under your control. You can block malicious fediverse instances or users, identify and block bots, etc.

Yes, ActivityPub is great for building Twitter alternatives, Facebook alternatives, and Snapchat alternatives. But you don't have to limit yourself – you can offer the precise combination of publish/subscribe services that meets your organization's needs, all under your control.

It's time to think outside the box.

#Fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub

Find me on Mastodon