Wow! It's astonishing to see how little Sprout Social understands about the Fediverse in their recent blog post aimed at helping marketers comprehend decentralized social media.
They claim that the Fediverse is similar to the Metaverse, but in reality, they couldn't be more dissimilar apart from the common "-verse" in their names. The only platform, Immers Space, attempting to bridge the Fediverse and Metaverse is currently very niche. It's disheartening that Sprout Social fails to acknowledge this crucial distinction.
To make matters worse, Sprout Social mistakenly associates the Fediverse with blockchain technology. But let me set the record straight – popular platforms like Mastodon and Firefish don't utilize blockchain in any way. Finding a Fediverse server that actually uses blockchain is like searching for a needle in a haystack, with the largest one having a meager 79 active users. It's clear that Sprout Social needs to do their homework on this front.
Furthermore, Sprout Social claims that many Fediverse networks are guided by DAOs, but where is the evidence? The platforms people actually use are not governed by any DAO. As someone who is familiar with the server firefish.social, I can confirm that it certainly doesn't rely on a DAO for its operations.
It's incredibly misleading for Sprout Social to include Steemit, Lens Protocol, and Hive Social in their list of Fediverse platforms. These platforms may dabble in cryptocurrency nonsense, but they do not employ ActivityPub or any decentralized protocols like Diaspora, OStatus, DRFN, or anything else that truly enables genuine federation within those social networks.
Perhaps Sprout Social could gain valuable insights into the true nature of the Fediverse if they paid attention to the "Fedi" in "Fediverse" – federation. Only platforms that facilitate real federation among multiple servers can be considered part of the Fediverse. Any platform that lacks this fundamental aspect, despite their claims, simply does not belong.
If Sprout Social plans on capitalizing on Fediverse-related features for their software, they should seriously reconsider their approach – and they should do it quickly!
