When any popular social media phenomenon occurs, Meta tries to jump into it. Seeing the success of other platforms, we’ve seen the company copy different kinds of formats, from stories to short videos. Now a company led by Mark Zuckerberg is working on a decentralized text-based app.
Meta confirmed the development in a statement, but did not provide any details about when the app will be released.
“We are looking at a standalone decentralized social network for sharing textual updates. We are thinking about it,” said a Meta spokesperson.
Codenamed P92, this new decentralized app is still in development, as first reported by MoneyControl. According to documents seen by the publication, the app will allow users to log in via her Instagram credentials. This can frustrate people who don’t want to share that data with another metaapp.
Platformer reports that the project will be overseen by Instagram head Adam Mosseri. The company has already engaged its legal department to sniff out privacy concerns early on, before the app goes live, the report added.
Meta’s move is seen as an attempt to create an alternative to Twitter or a competitor to Mastodon. The latter became popular after Elon Musk took over Twitter. The distributed network is part of Fediverse (a network of distributed servers) and supports the ActivityPub protocol. According to MoneyControl, Meta’s new app will support ActivityPub so that it can easily connect with other instances such as Mastodon.
There are many other tools that have implemented (or are planning to implement) support for ActivityPub, such as Tumblr, Flipboard, Flickr.
But decentralization is not limited to this protocol. His Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky launched his iOS app in beta last week. Also, messaging apps such as Rocket.chat have adopted his Matrix protocol.
But former Twitter engineer Brain Cook told TechCrunch last year that competing protocols are a good thing.
“I think the diversity of protocols is just as important as the diversity of applications built on top of them. That being said, I strongly believe interoperability between ActivityPub and Bluesky will not be difficult. For example, it is only protectionist policies by these companies that prevent interoperability between Twitter and Facebook timelines,” he pointed out.
It’s important to remember that Meta has been trying to create new apps and experiences. Over the past few years, he has experimented with anonymous teen app tbh, Cameo-like app Super, Nextdoor clone Neighborhoods, couple app Tuned, student social network Campus, video speed dating service Sparked, and TikTok clone Lasso. killed Please name a few. So it wouldn’t be surprising if new decentralized experiences shut down years after launch.
