Hello Fedi Friends! I'm planning to cover #Friendica in the next issue of my newsletter #TheFutureIsFederated and I have a question for power users.
What is a feature you love, that you wish new users would know about right off the bat? Or something that is not widely known and that makes Friendica really special for you?
Personally I love being able to follow my favorite blogs via RSS integration...
I would really appreciate it if you could boost this ✨🙏✨
Michael Vogel
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •If you have got deeper questions, you can always ask me, I'm in the development team. My opinion for Friendica is understandable biased, so I love mostly all features, since I implemented a lot of them by myself 😀
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Michael Vogel • •Andrea Russo
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 going from Mastodon to Friendica was incredible, like going from a tricycle to an Enduro moto, but if I have to choose one thing that I like the most, it's the fact that I can receive notifications not only when someone interacts with me, but also when someone interacts with the threads I have interacted with.
Then there are the terrible things, like the difficulty of use, but that's another story 😭
Michael Vogel
in reply to Andrea Russo • • •Informa Pirata
in reply to Michael Vogel • • •@Michael Vogel @Andrea Russo @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 I disagree 😅: Friendica's interface isn't the best, but it's fine enough!
I'll start by saying that I love Friendica and that, with poliverso.org, I brought Friendica back to Italy as an instance open to all, when it didn't yet have valid moderation tools.
Personally, I don't think it's worth investing time and resources to improve the web interface of Friendica, a tiny community, with just over 1,500 active users, because the web interface doesn't interest almost anyone and it isn't perceived as a value capable of increasing users.
Moreover, even if a bit confusing, Friendica's web interface has everything you need to exercise complete control over your user experience.
What could be decisive to relaunch Friendica is working on an Android app that can include all the features of what is indisputably the most powerful software in the Fediverse today.
And to do that, it is necessary that this app is aimed at Mastodon users, being compatible with Mastodon, and above all that it makes mastodon users want to try Friendica. How? For example with what is currently missing from all mastodon apps: an ergonomic and intuitive management of Activitypub groups
PS: I am curious to know what users who have known Friendica longer than me and probably better than me think, like @Elena ``of Valhalla'' @Fabio @anubis2814 and @Tio
Michael Vogel
in reply to Informa Pirata • • •Hank G ☑️
in reply to Informa Pirata • • •As @Michael Vogel said, I am working on an app targeting Friendica called Relatica. I need to just bite the bullet and put it in the app stores for real versus just testing. I wrote it in a technology called Flutter so it actually runs on mobile (iOS and Android) and desktop (Linux, Mac, and Windows). DM me and I can send a link to the beta/early access program for Apple AppStore or Google Play store.
gitlab.com/mysocialportal/rela…
Informa Pirata
in reply to Hank G ☑️ • • •@Hank G ☑️ Very gladly.
However, I still think that an app for Friendica has no actually market. But if you make an app for mastodon that is able to support all the features of Friendica you could even create the killer application for the Fediverse!
The real problem is that a well-made app costs 200 man-days and you can only get the necessary resources by getting financed by the Mastodon user community (or by looking for European NGI funds)
@Michael Vogel @Fabio @Tio @Elena ``of Valhalla'' @Andrea Russo @anubis2814 @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸
Dieguito 🦝 likes this.
Fabio
in reply to Informa Pirata • • •@Informa Pirata
I really hate the term "market", here.
@Elena ``of Valhalla'' @Michael Vogel @Tio @Andrea Russo @Hank G ☑️ @anubis2814 @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸
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Informa Pirata
in reply to Fabio • • •@Fabio I understand you, but "having a market" is a figure of speech. And the point is that a community has the ethical duty to contribute to the development of an open source app for an open source platform.
Just think that here on Poliverso, with 150 active users, and Poliversity, with 60 active users, I receive donations for less than 2 euros a week and the two instances cost about thirty euros a month; and 80% of the donations come from Mastodon users! Developing an app, however, costs more than 100k and programmers should never work only for glory.
So I confirm the expression "having a market", because "having a market" is the only way to make a development project sustainable. Today the community of Friendica users, with its 1,689 active users, is not able to support the development of an app.
But the community of those Mastodon users who are looking for a more complete user experience could really make the difference.
Therefore, a Mastodon app that not only provided all the features of Friendica, but also allowed Mastodon users to properly manage Friendica groups (and all ActivityPub groups in general) would be an app aimed at an audience of seven hundred thousand users (not 1,700!) and could find donations and funding from the user community.
@Michael Vogel @Tio @Elena ``of Valhalla'' @Andrea Russo @Hank G ☑️ @anubis2814 @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Informa Pirata • • •@Informa Pirata @Fabio OTOH, if, as you say, friendica has no market, why should somebody write an app for mastodon and then add support for friendica (which I don't think is going to take significantly less effort than just writing an app for friendica)?
It would be different if both mastodon and friendica supported activity pub c2s, but afaik they don't
(or, a developer who uses friendica may want an app, and decide to develop it in their free time, but then it would support exactly those features that that developer wants to use)
Matthias
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •like this
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Informa Pirata
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •@Elena ``of Valhalla'' @Fabio
The reason is that Friendica today is a software that offers as many features as any other software in the Fediverse can do, with the exception of the very complicated (and all in all useless) Hubzilla.
And on the other hand, Mastodon offers almost nothing (but that little is simple to use... this is its real strength) and even third-party Mastodon apps offer little more.
But think how interesting a Mastodon app that displays groups would be. And think how important it would be to do it before Mastodon gGmbH implements its groups outside the ActivityPub standard (because that's what it will do, as soon as it can)
The real effort to develop an app is not to make it work, but to make it usable. To do this you need qualified resources and the contribution of programmers who have real experience in professional app development. Basically, you need money.
This is exactly what happens today... 😁
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Informa Pirata • •@Informa Pirata
How would that work exactly?
Informa Pirata
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •A Mastodon app, designed by Friendica developers, could provide added value to Mastodon users (700,000 active users, not 1700 like Friendica) and, with the occasion, advertise a fantastic platform like Friendica
Fabio
in reply to Informa Pirata • • •@Informa Pirata
If mastodon users are missing features, those should be implemented in mastodon, it's not a client issue. Mastodon clients can do what mastodon servers (or whatever code is behind the api, posing as a mastodon server) can do and what is's api let you do.
Mastodon don't support long, rich formatted posts as Friendica: no app can change that.
Jonathan Lamothe likes this.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Informa Pirata • •anubis2814
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •utopiArte
in reply to Hank G ☑️ • • •I guess lot's of us could get the app from there and test it!
anubis2814
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • — (39.9493382 -75.1896439962691) • •like this
Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso and Informa Pirata like this.
reshared this
Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso and Informa Pirata reshared this.
Sean Riley
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •My favorite feature was groups, both private and public. They create small safe spaces and large open themed areas.
I launched it to get a small community off Facebook groups, it did not work. Most complained that there was no phone app. There is real difficulty in getting groups to move together. It usually requires a catalyst.
I’d love to see Mumble integrated as an option to allow for voices coms in groups easily.
Lorenzo
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •anubis2814 likes this.
alysonsee 🌻
in reply to Lorenzo • • •⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸
in reply to alysonsee 🌻 • • •anubis2814 likes this.
anubis2814
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •utopiArte
in reply to anubis2814 • • •> that G+ stole elements and ideas from diaspora. When G+ died many left for diaspora. Friendica still has way more features though
Looks like Threads was kinda the next step in this regard.
jesuiSatire …ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ
in reply to anubis2814 • • •@anubis2814
> Its actually been claimed that G+ stole elements and ideas from diaspora.
True, D* calls it "aspects".
> When G+ died many left for diaspora.
They actually created even an own diaspora pod (node), pluspora. Even came with their own culture and tried to impose it on the rest .. "a pain in the a**"!
😆
pod.geraspora.de/tags/googlepl…
@_elena @enzoesco @alysonsee
#googleplusrefugee
Geraspora*anubis2814
in reply to jesuiSatire …ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ • • •mike6ixgolf
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸
I'm on nerdica.net friendica instance. i'm not too familiar with groups or channels. i also unable to vote in mastodon polls for some reason. I am using android app 'Fedilab' for my daily driver as i find the UI better UX, the boost/reshare is obvious on the app, in the web version, i don't know which icon is the boost/reshare and have to go through the icons to find it. Also, fedilab has built-in libre translation service for translating a toot into my language.
#Friendica #TheFutureIsFederated #Fediverse
Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso
in reply to mike6ixgolf • • •@M6G @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸
Friendica does not support Mastodon polls
Fedilab is a great app, but unfortunately it is designed only for Mastodon. It works with Friendica only because Friendica developers decided to support Mastodon APIs. However, it cannot support either the advanced features or the standard view of Friendica
> Also, fedilab has built-in libre translation service for translating a toot into my language.
It's certainly a great feature, although I'm still happy with my mobile browser's translation system.
Matthias
Unknown parent • — (52.2551813 10.5283258) • •Simply set a
> spaceif Markdown is enabled for your account markdownguide.org/basic-syntax…With BBcode you can look here nerdica.net/help/BBCode
Nerdica.net Social Network | Help: BBCode
nerdica.netPoliverso - notizie dal fediverso
Unknown parent • • •[quote] [/quote]Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso
in reply to Matthias • • •@Matthias ✔ @M6G actually, I add the
>to make the quote clear even to old Mastodon versions, which can't read Friendica formatting.The
>is used to quote in Markdown formatting, not in BBCode... 😅Antonella Ferrari
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •alysonsee 🌻
in reply to Antonella Ferrari • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso • •Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso likes this.
Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso • •Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso likes this.
Hank G ☑️
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •Dame_
in reply to Hank G ☑️ • • •Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso likes this.
Jaddy
in reply to Dame_ • • •@Dame_ @Hank G ☑️ Some Mastodon Clients work fairly good with Friendica servers. I use Mona for iOS and Mac.
No polls, no threads and notifications have no preview.
But you can read your timeline and lists, respond, etc.
Martijn Vos
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸 • • •@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸
To me, the biggest feature by far is the ability to follow people on both Mastodon and Diaspora.
I love all the other features mentioned too: large posts, discussion structure, groups, etc.
The one thing I don't like it the full page reload when I post a comment. And the fact that it's written in PHP. I want to contribute, but I don't want to subject myself to PHP.
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Michael Vogel
Unknown parent • • •utopiArte
Unknown parent • • •I don't use nor install the #playstore.
OK, I could use the aurora app of the f-droid store or APKpure.
btw
f-droid.org is as important as the #fediverse in my opinion.
It's my first reference for any app to know if it's ledgit or not. So publishing the #APP their first boosts #f-droid and the FOSS community too.