Big business moves have ripple effects everywhere.
InMotion has noticed a surge in interest in Mastodon content. His popular federated social media app, Mastodon, can be hosted on a virtual private server and has many of the same features as Twitter.
Just around the time Elon Musk announced his plans to buy the Twitter social media platform and make significant changes, some users began looking for alternatives.
The trend surged, but then dropped again. Perhaps old Twitter users have recovered from the shock of their purchase and returned to their favorite apps. Perhaps the searcher found what they were looking for, installed Mastodon or joined an existing instance, and left happily. data does not say.
Still, researching alternatives is a great way to learn more about open source software. Below we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Mastodon compared to other open source options.
Below are five Twitter alternatives you can consider for your website.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a good starting point for finding alternatives that best suit your needs.
1. Mastodon
Mastodon is a “federated” open source microblogging platform that has recently become popular as a Twitter alternative. You can post “Toots” instead of “Tweet”.
Federated apps essentially use different protocols and APIs to connect servers and users across a vast distributed network.
Mastodon is most different from Twitter in its decentralized nature. Twitter (and other large social apps) are centralized “walled gardens,” but decentralized networks lack such control.
This means that you get more freedom, but otherwise you might end up connecting with nasty users who will get you banned from Twitter.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it if you’re interested in federation services.
Mastodon allows you to host your own server or join an existing instance. Having your own server gives you ultimate control to apply your own standards and provide a productive environment for your subscribers.
2. pleroma
like a mastodon pleroma It is a federated open source microblogging app. Similarly, Pleroma offers many of the same Twitter-style network features such as activity streams, hashtags, and private messages.
However, unlike Twitter, Pleroma boasts a great out-of-the-box live chat feature.
In my experience, I’ve found Pleroma to be relatively easy to install and manage.
Even better, Pleroma is generally considered lighter, more performant, and requires less server resources than Mastodon. This means that even a cheap VPS cloud server will do just fine with Pleroma. Mastodon requires a whole stack of Ruby on Rails, NodeJS, and other software, while Pleroma only requires Elixir and a PostgreSQL database.
3. buddy press
of BuddyPress plugin WordPress itself is easy to install, so for WordPress is probably the easiest social network to install. BuddyPress also boasts the same social features as the other apps on this list.
BuddyPress users can send friend requests, send private messages, and create groups.
BuddyPress is not integrated. This means that WordPress site user accounts cannot connect to larger networks. However, a WordPress Multisite network allows you to create virtually unlimited sites, allowing users on one node to interact with other sites in that network.
It works like a federation service, but is limited to one WordPress installation. It’s like building your own walled garden.
Given the general ease of use of WordPress, I think BuddyPress is the easiest and most direct way to start a social network. And with the wide availability of WordPress hosting plans, you don’t have to spend time configuring your server.
Four. pixel feed
Federated for something completely different pixel feed The app works like Instagram. Upload high-quality photos and videos and manage your site on your own private server.
It’s not exactly a Twitter alternative, but if your ideal subscriber values ​​sharing photo and video media over text, Pixelfed can be considered a good option.
Like other decentralized social apps, Pixelfed focuses on privacy and security.
However, much of the security and maintenance of your server is your responsibility.
Five. email newsletter
The ultimate open source alternative to Twitter is good old email, not a social network.
Everyone has an email account. WordPress offers a variety of email newsletter plugins.
Email is often sent from third-party networks, offloading email management to larger providers.This aspect of the process is generally not open source. However, managing your own e-mail server is notoriously difficult.
Email, while not dynamic, provides an overall simple and direct way to connect with your subscribers.
Likewise, your mailing list will be with you forever and you can bring it to the service you’ve been using for years.
These are just a few of the options for open source social networking apps. Researching alternatives is a fun way to test open source projects. If you have any questions about these tools, leave a comment below or contact our live support team.
