Prelude
One of the earliest blog post I have published for the series The Future is Federated was titled “The Top 10 Reasons Why Mastodon is the Best Social Media Platform.” The piece spread quickly across the Fediverse, with over 100 boosts and likes. Most commenters were in agreement with my enthusiasm but a dissenting opinion soon emerged: “what about Friendica?”
@anubis2814@friendica.myportal.social wrote “Friendica is better than Mastodon, just has terrible marketing/naming. Has all the best features of nearly every single social media site ever made.”
This sentiment was repeated by other people in my mentions. “Best features” kept coming up again and again. My interest was piqued.
Of course I had heard about Friendica since my early explorations of the Fediverse, but I had waited to try it out because of its small user base. According to fedidb (a phenomenal database with up-to-date statistics about the Fediverse, made and maintained by Pixelfed creator @dansup) Friendica only has about 14,559 total users and of those only 1692 are “monthly active users” (MAU). If you were to look at the most used Fediverse software, Friendica ranks in 18th place, well below projects like Fedibird and Akkoma (which I had never heard about). But you know what? Friendica users are incredibly passionate about it, often singing its praises and deeming it to be features-rich, unique and brilliant.
The factor that pushed me to finally sign up for a Friendica account was a toot on Mastodon about fundraising efforts for the Harris 2024 campaign. Its organizer Heidi Li Feldman had set up a Friendica group to coordinate efforts - following the advice and help of Tim Chambers (who is currently running the group). I was curious to see how organizing support for Harris would work in a Friendica group versus on Mastodon. So I decided to take the plunge and sign up.
Friendica - like any other software on the Fediverse - asks you to pick an instance when you register.
The servers mentioned in its dashboard had long, convoluted names and since I was feeling a little lost, I ended up selecting the same instance* as the fundraising for Harris campaign.
*an update (as of August 24): I have now switched to a new instance hosted by poliverso.org
Once my account had been activated, I began taking the first steps in the app, immediately focusing on the unique features I had heard so many great things about: the ability to add and follow RSS feeds and BlueSky accounts.
I opened a second browser window, logged onto my RSS aggregator Feedly, and began copying and pasting the RSS links of my favorite newsletters, starting with Garbage Day and Platformer. Like magic, entire recent blog posts appeared seamlessly in the Friendica interface, as if they were toots from Mastodon. My jaw dropped.
After an hour of tweaking my Friendica account - and being blown away by its functionalities – I felt compelled to publish this toot on Mastodon:
This happened 10 days ago.
Friendica is so features-rich that I felt intimidated to write about it for last week’s issue of my series The Future Is Federated. I kept thinking: as a newbie, I cannot possibly write about Friendica after using it for only 2 days. I need another week of testing.
So I tested it daily - tweaking settings, browsing it on mobile devices in iOS and Android, using it in made-for-Mastodon apps and platforms like Ivory and Phanpy.social. The whole nine yards. And you know what? After a week elapsed, I STILL felt completely intimidated to write about Friendica. So earlier this week I published this toot, asking for the opinions of Friendica power users:
I am incredibly grateful for all the responses the toot got - and all the great insights. This article will incorporate my impressions as well as opinions of some longtime Friendica users.
Last but not least: I am writing this piece with the greatest humility - I am a new user of Friendica who aims to introduce to the software people unfamiliar with it, who might find it useful.
This won’t be “the ultimate user guide” of Friendica - there are already excellent detailed guides on the subject (@anubis2814 mentioned earlier posted Friendica tutorials on YouTube, Tio published a beginners' guide to Friendica that was translated into Italian, adapted and expanded by @informapirata).
Think of this article as the equivalent of a tasting menu, with samples of what Friendica has to offer.
Friendica 101: What is Friendica?
I have often heard people describe Friendica as the Fediverse’s answer to Facebook. That is probably the reason why I was in no rush to try it out. I deactivated my Facebook account in early 2017. And in 7 years of not using it, I didn’t really miss it. Not even a little. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “Facebook” my first thoughts are: Cambridge Analytica, election misinformation, AI spam and violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar. Do I need an alternative to Facebook in the Fediverse? Not really.
We need a different way to frame and define Friendica: I would say Friendica is an incredibly powerful aggregator of social networks and online content; it is part of the Fediverse, with all the advantages of the open social web.
Wired described it as such:
Friendica [is] a versatile platform that can connect with almost any other social network. It supports many protocols, including ActivityPub (used by Mastodon and Pleroma), Diaspora, and even old-school protocols like RSS. Friendica is a great choice for users who want to bridge the gap between the fediverse and traditional social media platforms. Its flexibility and integration capabilities make it the ultimate social network aggregator.
I also loved the description of Andrea Russo, who wrote (in response to my toot to power users):
@_elena going from Mastodon to Friendica was incredible, like going from a tricycle to an Enduro moto...
First Impressions
When you first log onto Friendica you are met with a user interface that feels dated, with vibes from the early 2000s. Is that a turn off? Not at all, because the platform’s functionalities are incredible.
It’s like meeting a really interesting, intellectually brilliant, empathetic, generous person who has an old fashioned sense of style. Surely you would overlook so-called cosmetic “shortcomings” and pursue a friendship with them because beneath the surface they are the brightest, nicest person you have ever met. I know I would. And honestly, if someone decides not to use Friendica because of its slightly outdated interface, it’s on them. I find it brilliant under the hood and almost like I now belong to a small, secret club of Friendica aficionados who are into substance, not style.
A Tasting Menu of Friendica: Top 3 Highlights
1: Friendica’s Unparalleled Interoperability
Friendica takes the crown for interoperability. The Friendica homepage highlights all the integrations the software supports:
Built-in support for ActivityPub (e.g. Funkwhale, Hubzilla, Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed), OStatus (e.g. StatusNet, GNU social, Quitter) and diaspora* protocols.
Support for email contacts and communications (two-way) via IMAP4rev1/ESMTP.
Import arbitrary websites and blogs into your social stream via RSS/Atom feeds.
Support for other services via plugins.
As I mentioned earlier, the day I signed up for Friendica I spent some time importing into it the RSS feeds of my favorite blogs and publications (Garbage Day in primis), as well as a handful of my favorite Mastodon, Bluesky and federated Threads accounts.
Whenever you start “following” someone - more like, adding them as a contact - you are encouraged to organise new connections into “Circles.” Remember the late Google+? Yes, exactly like that.
I haven’t attempted to connect my email address, but I’ve noticed how Friendica integrates with several social networks like Tumblr (it used to support two-way connection with Twitter too, in the old pre-Musk days).
2: Friendica’s Superior Reading Experience
What is really cool about Friendica is that you have a different reading experience than on Mastodon. It’s far easier and quicker to visualize reactions and read replies to a post. I suppose similarly to Facebook?
HankG (who is developing the Friendica mobile app Relatica) wrote (emphasis mine):
The first of my two biggest favorite features of Friendica over the other fediverse options are the post/comments idiom, more of a Facebook-like UX, over the status streams, the Twitter-like UX. The second is how much more pervasively it integrates with federated networks in general. It isn't just the ActivityPub fediverse that Mastodon, PixelFed, PeerTube, etc. rides on. It is also the entire Diaspora federated network, RSS's, and even networks like Bluesky (albeit using the client API not the ATProto federation system). It basically makes Friendica the hub of my whole social media experience.
An example:
Friendica's user interface is filled with subtle and elegant gems. For example, at the bottom of each post you can see hashtags displayed as light blue tags and Fediverse accounts (that were mentioned in the post) displayed in light brown tags - so you can easily click on them and discover more interesting content and accounts.
You can browse posts by “Circle” (think, like Google+ or a Twitter or Mastodon list), “Protocol” (ActivityPub, Bluesky, RSS/Atom...), by account type (persons, organisations, news, groups, relays) or by “Channels” (custom feeds, like “recent activity” “what’s hot”, “for you”, “followers”, “English” etc.).
I can’t think of any other social network that gives you all these options. Friendica’s unspoken message is: “you are in control.”
In the 10 days I’ve been using it, Friendica has become my favorite content hub: it’s the first social network I check in the morning (on my phone - its mobile responsiveness is top notch) and whenever I’m working at my computer I always keep a Friendica tab open.
A heads-up: it is of paramount importance to correctly set up (according to your taste) the way new posts show up.
My first week on Friendica I was puzzled by all the posts I would see in my feed from accounts I was not following. I only had 24 contacts then and yet my feed was populated by posts of people I did not recognize. I could not figure out why they showed up or how to “weed” those out. On Friendica you can follow hashtags - just like you can do on Mastodon - but those posts have a subtle hashtag icon at the top. I could not understand where the posts by random people came from... they did not contain hashtags I was following.
Friendica’s settings have a myriad of options. I finally figured out that what I needed to do was go to Settings > Social Networks > Followed Content Scope and select the option “only conversations my follows started”. That’s because the default setting on Friendica (as of August 2024) is “conversations my follows started or commented on”. This populates your feed with posts by people you do NOT follow, if one of your contacts replied to them.
Once I figured this out, it was all smooth sailing and I have been greatly enjoying using Friendica as my Fediverse and blog content hub.
3: Friendica gives your posts superpowers (i.e. advanced styling options)
When I asked Fediverse power users what they liked the most about Friendica, Antonella Ferrari replied:
the thing i like the most is that i can create long posts with formatted text and images
In a follow-up message, I asked Antonella if she could provide an example to illustrate this. Antonella sent me this:
You can see the original post at this link: https://poliverso.org/display/0477a01e-5666-b1eb-5b57-f11838228425
Indeed, when you want to compose a new post in Friendica, you have a pop-up window with a text box and several advanced formatting options. You can give your post a title, format styles of words and sentences (with italics, bold, underlined text), include quotes with indentation, add hyperlinks to words and sentences, insert emojis, mention your location and embed photos:
If you want to see what this Friendica post looked like once it was published, you can check it out on my Friendica feed.
Long Fediverse posts with formatted text is the thing I like the most about my federated Wordpress blog (thanks to ActivityPub) and it’s fantastic that this is a built-in feature of Friendica.
A Realistic Evaluation
The first 2-3 days I was on Friendica I kept thinking about how it would be the perfect platform for people coming from commercial social media to set up a home on the Fediverse. I wanted to invite all my best friends to try it.
However, I have since changed my mind for two reasons. I believe that at the present moment the Friendica infrastructure is not solid enough to scale and welcome a wave of new users. The server my instance is on is quite slow, often leaving me with a spinning wheel whenever I want to follow a new account. I’m not talking about a 2 second lag - more like 20 seconds at times, or even more. I feel this would turn off non-technical users who expect instantaneous results.
The other reason is Friendica’s learning curve, which is a bit steep, and its myriad of settings, which one could easily get lost in. Friendica’s Settings page makes me think of the concept of the “paradox of choice” - how having too many options to choose from can lead to less satisfaction, feelings of overwhelm, and decision paralysis.
Sure, these aren't problems for someone who is motivated to leave commercial social media, but they could be obstacles for a person who enjoys apps like Instagram and Threads and doesn't have the patience to learn how to use yet another platform.
Wrapping up: Friendica Mon Amour 💖
I wouldn’t want to conclude a post about Friendica on a negative note - because despite its flaws, Friendica has fast become my favorite place in the Fediverse.
I know I only addressed the tip of the iceberg with this post (Friendica power users don’t get angry at me). There is just so much to like and appreciate about Friendica. It's that good.
Who knows, with the Fediverse getting a lot of newfound interest, maybe there will be investments in Friendica servers... or fundraising efforts to support servers and their admins. I know I would donate instantly.
Would I recommend that people already on the Fediverse try out Friendica? Absolutely. Don’t walk, run: friendi.ca
What’s Next?
My Fediverse explorations started with Mastodon, continued on Pixelfed and last week I successfully federated my Wordpress site. Then I tried Friendica and really loved it. What’s next?
I want to try MissKey (or a fork of it) and talk about it here. I also have a Lemmy account but I have yet to test its interoperability with other Fediverse software.
Stay tuned. And thank you for all your supportive messages - I’m delighted to hear my series The Future is Federated has been resonating with you.
Onwards and upwards!
Elena
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