The year 2023 has brought many changes to social media, including the rise and fall of the wildly popular app BeReal, Twitter becoming X, and the emergence of paid versions of Facebook and Instagram. Justina Antropik, "Tele2” head of digital content, says that another trend emerged during the past year, which was called the term “fediverse” – the ability of many different social networks to interact with each other and share information. According to her, this gives users the convenience of using the social platforms they like the most, even if other people close to them aren't using them.
A way to 'break the internet'
More than a decade ago, a photo appeared on the Internet, and still occasionally appears, showing how from JAV the active classifieds website "Craigslist" (which in Lithuania can be considered the equivalent of "Skelbiu.lt") has developed separate successful digital platforms. For example, the arts and crafts section of the portal has become an Etsy shop, and the short-term rental section has become AirBnB. Thus, one platform that has long ruled the market has split into many smaller and better user-experience-creating applications.
According to Mr. Antropik, a similar trend is already happening with social networks - the term "fedivisatos" (a combination of the English words "federation" and "universe"), which emerged last year, describes the desire to break up these Internet platforms.
"In short, fedivisata are interconnected smaller social networks where everyone can read and write the same content. Such decentralized social networks are often compared to email, because you don't have to use the same platform to communicate with other people. For example, if I use Gmail and you use Outlook, both of our platforms know what email is. mail address and will forward the letters regardless of their differences. This is already the case with some social media," says J. Antropik.
According to the expert, so far this trend is more noticeable on smaller foreign platforms - linked content can be seen on such platforms as Mastodon, Pixelfed, Flipboard, Mammoth. However, its benefits are already seen by larger market players - Mark Zuckerberg, who heads the social networking giant Meta, admitted that connecting the new Threads app to fedivisat would be a good decision. In addition, Instagram already allows you to see what your followers are writing in Threads, as well as the ability to instantly share the same content between your Facebook and Instagram accounts, with the latter even seeing the views collected by Facebook.
Names several fines
At first glance, the fact that instead of Snapchat, Instagram or X apps will appear a hundred more platforms imitating their functions may seem confusing and unnecessary, but experts see even a few benefits of such a change. First of all, users would no longer have to have multiple logins, different profiles, and re-follow the people they want on different platforms. All this information would belong to the user himself and he himself could use it at his own discretion.
"You could call it a free market approach to social media. The only way to win at fedivisate is to create the best product. Now, each social media is a separate universe. The only way to see Facebook posts is to join Facebook, agree to its rules, adapt to its aesthetics, features, algorithm and business model. This is no longer a good experience for the modern user, because people want to feel as if their social connections and content belong to them, and not to one company that can disappear or change its direction like Twitter did last year, - notes Mr. Antropik .
Instead of trying to build another overarching social network from scratch, she adds, in fediuniverse, a developer can pick one or more of its features and try to improve upon them. Users have more options to choose their favorite apps – or two, or two hundred – to see the content they want, all based on a single set of messages and an open network of friends and followers.
"This change, evident in 2023, looks set to continue this year as well. How quickly we will notice it in everyday life will depend on our willingness to try and innovate, and on the efforts of such market giants as Meta to adapt to the changing needs of users," says Tele2's head of social media content.
