I am a little bit sad that the #Fediverse largely cristallised in a way that made Mastodon-like microblogging the default, and everything else an 'extension' at best.

Of course there are other systems and software choices out there, but from what I can see, the only non-microblogging one with real staying power is Pixelfed.

I am a big fan of the 'personal macroblogging' style of social media, i. e. what Facebook and Myspace were back in the day. Specifically, a big focus on structured social data and the way software uses that to provide functionality automatically.

I want expansive profiles with tons of fields like hobbies, birthday and other anniversaries, fun fact and trivia, favourite bands, foods, songs, ideology, location, nicknames, game collections...

And I want the software to be able to use that data for cool functionality! I want birthday reminders for my friends, I wanna get profile recommendations for people with similar hobbies and tastes! I want to be able to create events and notify everyone who is into the same things! I want to be able to have hobby groups to post into and fanpages and all.

Over here on the microblogging side of things, profiles are pretty barebones and there's hardly any data integration. The only fields that software really considers is name, pronouns, hashtags and in some cases specific integrations like ListenBrainz on GoToSocial. That's it. Everything beyond that is just posts.

I get why collecting and sharing vast amounts of personal data kiiinda went out of fashion, but I think consent-based systems rather than data brokers would make me comfortable enough to share these things.

I know Friendica and Diaspora exist, but their development is super slow, they don't federate well, and more importantly, their communities are nonexistant. What use is the best technology in the world if nobody uses it? Noone uses Friendica events and birthdays and whatever. That makes me sad.

#fedi #mastodon #pixelfed #friendica #gotosocial