The fediverse is an open global network of interconnected, but still independent, social media servers, each with its own users, content and rules. In Threads, you can turn on sharing to the fediverse to see posts from those other servers – and have your own posts shared on those servers for others to see. For more information on what the fediverse is and how it works, see our fediverse explainer.
Our new search feature and dedicated fediverse feed help you discover more perspectives from people outside of Threads. You don’t have to miss out on anyone’s posts just because they happen to post on different platforms.
Starting today, if you’ve turned on sharing to the fediverse in Threads, you’ll be able to see posts from federated users you follow (people who are sharing to the fediverse) that were posted originally on other apps or servers and shared to the fediverse.
This means if a thought leader you follow posts on Mastodon, for example, and shares it to the fediverse, you’ll be able to see their post in a Threads feed made up of posts from the fediverse. This allows you to see a broader range of views, no matter where they’re posted. Right now, servers connected to the fediverse include Mastodon, Bookwyrm, WriteFreely and more, and we hope others will join as time goes on. Content surfaced in the dedicated fediverse feed on Threads appears in reverse chronological order, with the newest posts from profiles you follow coming first.
Newsletters are a good comparison. You might use newsletters as a way to catch up on news published across the internet. Similarly, with fediverse content on Threads, it’s like you’re curating your own personal newsletter, a feed full of notes and posts published on apps like Ghost, Flipboard and WordPress – but unlike a newsletter, you can interact with the people responsible for the content you’re reading. Imagine scrolling through a feed with a roundup of your favorite voices and contributors from a range of apps all in one place.
You can also now search for fediverse profiles directly in Threads. For example, you can search for a WordPress blogger’s federated profile and interact with their posts right in Threads. That way, you’ll be able to see the many conversations happening across platforms while in Threads.
To search for a federated user on Threads, just type their name in the search bar. For example, if you input “@[email protected] and there’s an exact match, the search result will show their fediverse profile with the fediverse icon.
These two new features will help you find your community and exchange perspectives with others, no matter what platform they’re on, leading to more vibrant conversations.
Marking One Year of the Fediverse on Threads
We’re proud to have made a great deal of progress on interoperability (the ability for servers to exchange information) over the past year, with a few major highlights.
Last March, we made sharing to the fediverse possible for people 18+ with public Threads profiles in the US, Japan and Canada. Then in June, we expanded globally, excluding the European Region. Since then, we’ve made it possible for you to see the people from other fediverse servers who like your posts and follow you and enabled you to follow people from other fediverse servers.
To date, Threads has interacted with over 75% of all fediverse servers since launching sharing to the fediverse one year ago. .
Our goal remains to grow the fediverse responsibly, prioritizing the success of a safe community from multiple platforms and with multiple points of view. The new fediverse feed and the ability to search for fediverse users in Threads are one more step in our journey to make this social platform fully interoperable. We’ll continue to collaborate with developers and policymakers to make progress in this space, so that as many people as possible can experience the benefits of the fediverse.
