Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, has announced that the ActivityPub feature is now available across all WordPress.com plans.
This means that anyone using the hosted version of WordPress.com can now connect to decentralized social networks and link their blogs to these platforms, such as Mastodon.
Earlier this year, Automattic acquired a plugin that allows tracking WordPress blogs on decentralized social networks and launched version 1.0.0 of the plugin.
This enabled tracking of WordPress blogs on Mastodon and other decentralized applications, even though WordPress.com blogs were not supported at that time.
Blog owners gain the ability to reach a broader audience using this plugin, in addition to the capability to share posts across various platforms and receive feedback from those platforms, turning them into blog comments.
This can foster interactive and dynamic discussions around content, as emphasized by Automattic, the blog itself might also become a user’s account on decentralized networks, using the plugin, instead of the need to set up a new account directly on the decentralized network, granting access to the broad audience that includes 1.8 million monthly active users within the Mastodon platform and a total of 13.3 million users across decentralized networks as a whole.
The ActivityPub protocol for social networks allows cross-platform communication, meaning users can view and interact with content from other platforms without creating a new account.
The ActivityPub plugin, now owned by Automattic, has seen a total of 54,756 installations compared to last month’s 42,831.
The setup is available across WordPress sites at the Free, Personal, and Premium levels, enabling millions of blogs to join decentralized social networks.
Official support for the ActivityPub protocol in WordPress comes at a time when social networks are striving to compete with Big Tech, with many users considering the switch to alternative social platforms.
Alternative social platforms like Mastodon, Pleroma, and Threema have experienced significant user increases periodically, each offering its unique atmosphere and competition.
