Creators! Raise your hand if you’ve heard people talking about The Fediverse but aren’t sure why you should care or invest in *yet another* online space. We wouldn’t blame you if so: the Fediverse represents a new way of operating, and its language and concepts can take some getting used to. 

To understand how creators, specifically, can benefit, we went to a key figure in the Fediverse’s development, Evan Prodromou. Prodromou is a co-editor of ActivityPub, a technology underpinning the Fediverse, making it interoperable and bringing everything together into a single social graph and content-sharing system. (Read more about it in this great piece from The Verge.) 

Prodromou’s been working on this project for a whopping 15 years already, and he’s excited to start to feel momentum for something that’s been in progress for so long. We got on Zoom with him to get some straight answers on what creators should make of the Fediverse, why it matters to their creative and business efforts, and what are some best practices in this brave new world. 

BTW, you can find Evan in the Fediverse at https://cosocial.ca/@evan.

Why should creators — from publishers to individuals — join the Fediverse?

Well, it can be extremely easy to get started technically, especially if you’re already publishing using RSS, Amp or something else. You can set up a Mastodon server for your organization, use a system like Mastohost (@mastohost@mastodon.social), or even publish on an existing server like Mastodon.social [or Flipboard.social]. 

But how would you advise on creating your own instance versus taking advantage of a pre-existing one?

That’s a super good question. If you are using a server that’s run by someone else, you should be understanding that you’re kind of working at that organization’s or person’s whim. Some services are paid; some are free. You’re probably going to get better support from a paid service than a free one. 

There’s also some brand association when you use someone else’s server. If you’re using journa.host, for example, the idea is that it’s for individual journalists. There’s Mastodon.social, which is kind of general purpose. So if you’re going to join an existing site, stick with one of the ones that’s more general purpose unless you’re a content creator in a specific area. If you’re an information security publisher, for example, then being on the infoSec.exchange is probably fine. But in general, you’re going to want to keep the brand of the server as neutral as possible so it’s not clouding your brand. You can start off with one of the general purpose servers, see if you get traction, and at that point, you can move to your own server. That’s one of the other great things about Mastodon: you can switch between accounts relatively easily. 

OK, now back to the key question: why should creators put effort into this?

I only have anecdotal evidence on this, but the anecdotes that I have heard from creators are that engagement in the Fediverse is significantly higher than on Twitter, Facebook, etc. (I mean organic engagement.) From my point of view, as someone who publishes to a small audience — I only have like 6,500 followers — I see about a 10x improvement of people who are engaging, responding, liking, and doing the kind of things that I expect to see. 

Part of that is that you’re publishing into  a smaller network you’re just gonna get a higher engagement rate. 

Another part of it  the algorithm. Twitter and Facebook intentionally depress engagement in order to push publishers into paid advertisements. That doesn’t exist in the Fediverse; there’s not that dampening quality in the algorithm so you actually get better engagement.

Is it fair to say that there’s no algorithms in the Fediverse?

Some people will say there is an algorithm; it’s just the latest stuff shows up first. It’s not how we think of algorithms though. There will be more and more algorithmic work happening, but it’s probably going to be user controlled: users paying for algorithmic clients and not the platform owner deciding who gets to see what.

There is a hard part about the Fediverse, which is that because there’s no locus of control, there’s no single entity running the network, verification is hard. In the Fediverse, there’s no entity that can do verification for you. There are a couple of things that people have done: one is running your own server in a domain that you control. Flipboard is a great example there. A domain can be a form of verification. 

The other thing that people like the Washington Post have done is connect a Mastodon account with an author page on whatever your website is. Save this Mastodon account for this journalist at our organization. It’s a verification method called Rel=Me, which basically pointstwo pages at each other, and because they point at each other, you know that it’s the same person who’s in charge. 

Another big benefit for creators is that in the Fediverse, you don’t lose your following. Can you speak to that? 

If you’re on Twitter, and you decide that you’re going to move your presence to Instagram, you might announce it on Twitter, but you’ll have to build up a whole new network on Instagram. In the Fediverse, you just have to say, ‘Hey, I’m moving. I’m now over here,’and all my followers are coming with me.’ You have this amazing sense that your followers are yours to take to different parts of the Fediverse as you wish.

What do you think are some new rules of engagement for creators in the Fediverse?

In the blog era — and I know that’s going pretty far back — we used to say things like, ‘don’t read the comments.’ For a while, you would feel like a part of a conversational network. Then that degenerated to a sense that anyone who has something to say about what I write is going to be nasty and unpleasant. That sense translated to social media networks, so engaging with commenters on Facebook and Twitter can sometimes feel like it’s a big waste of time. It’s not going to be productive for me. 

The emotional temperature of the Fediverse, especially at this time, is such that you can get productive conversations. Community feedback can be really productive. It is a chance to catch on and engage with this new, growing community. The creators who are willing to answer questions or provide responses in that network are going to get the following and the engagement.

Do you have any best practices around how often to post in the Fediverse?

Good question. We talked a little bit about this at the beginning. The default streaming in Mastodon, which is the service that most people use, as well as the default interface for most mobile clients, is strictly reverse chronological. Last in, first out. Most recent stuff on top, going back in time. 

What that means is that if you post at 10pm by the time I’m logging on this morning at 8:30, while I’m eating my breakfast cereal, there’ll be a whole bunch of stuff that’s pushed it out of the way. On smaller networks, when you’re not following a lot of people, that effect probably doesn’t feel like a big deal. But for very engaged users, it’s going to push your content out of the way. Consequently, in the Fediverse, it is very acceptable to reshare and repost your own content throughout, say, a 24 hour period. So if you’re posting on Wednesday at noon and you can reshare it at 6pm and midnight and 6am  — that’s very acceptable in this environment. If you are on a daily or every two or three days [publishing cadence], take the time to come back and push that content back into people’s back into the top of people’s streams.

Do you have any advice about finding your people in the Fediverse?

Yes, it is a window that is closing fast. But especially for people who have used Twitter quite a bit, there are tools that exist to move your Twitter social graph to Mastodon. Put your Mastodon link into your Twitter bio. And then you can use a tool like Fedifinder or Movetodon. You will automatically find people that you follow and their Mastodon accounts and follow those automatically. Movetodon is the best. The problem is API keys. API access is really dropping off for all these systems that use Twitter’s API. I would recommend that if you haven’t done it already, it’s a good time to try those.

Have you seen creators being able to monetize their activity in the Fediverse?

I’ve seen Patreon-style contributions. So become a member, join my Patreon, etc. 

I have also seen that it’s possible to set restricted followers. So this is my public account, and this is my private account; it only goes out to “sponsors.” Especially for individual creators, it’s a way of letting your supporters provide content for you; again, something that’s very acceptable in the Fediverse world. 

An option for bigger creators is to post links, teaser information, etc. that link off to a subscriber only site. That’s another way to go: a mix of free and paid content that leads into a subscriber-only service.

It’s a great virtuous cycle: the more content creators there are, the more audience is drawn to the Fediverse. It’s going to be the creators who take the first steps in this direction, who are going to reap the most benefits. If you are the 1000th, 10,000th or 100,000th creator to come onto the Fediverse, you’re just not going to see the same benefit as being among the first few 100. 

— Mia Q., head of creator community, is co-curating the Flipboard Collage Collective Magazine