Building apps for social spaces

The Newsmast team was in Rome last week, working through our messaging and branding with a non-profit agency. It was hot, hard work, ending up with a lot of mosquito bites, some fabulous memories and a clear plan to take forward. Here’s the big idea we’re working on: 

What if every community could have their own early-Twitter, driven by an own-branded mobile app, as easy to build as Facebook Groups? 

For the tech-led Fediverse, everything starts with a server, or even a protocol - but that’s not how most people think about and use social media. For the average person, and the average community, social spaces start with an app. Over the last year, we’ve tried pitching servers to organisations - first with an enhanced Mastodon server, then with Channel.org communities. The message just doesn’t gel. It’s too complicated, too IT-centred, and too confusing all round. There’s a huge chasm between organisations feeling unhappy with oligarch-owned social media, and the solution of spinning up a Fediverse server.

Instead, what we found at an alternative news festival in the UK, and talking to news and non-profit organisations, is that independent news publishers and campaigning organisations love the idea of having an app. News and community in your pocket and in your hand, where you expect it to be. Not in a data centre.

So we’re turning open social on its head, and going all-in on apps. Throughout October we’re finishing up a bunch of pilots, ready to introduce them through the Fediverse track at SFSCON in Bolzano, Italy, in early November.

Micro-community apps

First up, we plan to offer non-profits, community organisations and campaigns their own mini-app on iOS and Android, hosted within our Community app. We’ll offer Build-an-App in two easy steps - basic info, and hub creation - plus a third optional step of a curated channel, giving communities:

• Their own brand and icon on their users’ phones.
• A home channel of community posts, or curated content, giving users instant immersion in what matters.
• A community hub which users can join via the app, using a channel.org subdomain or the community’s own domain/subdomain.
• Connections through to all our Newsmast and user-curated channels, and the wider open social web.

White-label community apps

This was the start of our app journey. For the Media Revolution campaign in the UK we’ve built a version of our white-label app called Mo-Me, short for Movement Media.

After a period of testing, we’re launching this week, ahead of Media Revolution day on 5th November. We’re also about to start work with a UK-based Fediverse community to do the same thing:

• An app store listing on Apple and Google, plus a web app if required.
• Community branding, colours and fonts.
• Local language as default.
• Local and topical channels made just for that community.
• Plugged in to a new community hub, or an existing Mastodon server - either works.

Where the social connection for a Facebook Group is the Meta walled garden, our community apps connect through to the open social web, on the Fediverse, and, across the bridge, Bluesky.

White-label news apps

Our news apps add another dimension to social spaces: news. We’re plugging in to WordPress, building on the work done with the WordPress plugin, and adding a News screen to our app. For independent news publishers we offer:

• A state-of-the-art app alongside the print publication and website.
• Publisher branding, colours and fonts.
• Single sign-on for subscribers.
• A community hub for chat and comment.
• Local and topical channels made just for that publication.

So users can swipe through all the latest news, connect with other members, check out local content channels, and participate in national and global conversations too. All on one locally-branded news app.

Fully customised channels

We’re releasing an open-source version of our feed generator, channel.org, so that a larger community can offer their app users fully customised channels of content:

• Content channels running on a community domain.
• Local language.
• No-boost by default - so accounts who post to the channel aren’t plagued with notifications.
• Option to boost to the wider Fediverse, if posters are happy with this.

At the same time, we’ll customise our app to match these locally generated channels. We’re working with a large Fediverse community to release a customised version of our white-label app first, then roll out customised local channels.

Hub dashboard

For the community hubs (currently Mastodon servers) behind our apps, we’re releasing a cut-down version of our Patchwork Dashboard, offering the following as options for news publishers, campaign groups and Fediverse communities:

• Community branding on the web UI and all service emails.
• Content filters for hate speech, spam and NSFW content.
• Automatic Bluesky bridging for all users, with a short username.
• Long posts.
• Web app to replace the classic web UI.

We’re aiming to add local-only posts and e-newsletters shortly, and cross-server moderation via Bonfire further down the track. What’s great about this is that with Mastodon upping the cadence of their releases, we can offer groups like Media Revolution customised servers without touching the core codebase, making upgrades simpler and faster.

Social spaces, not servers

Social spaces, not servers, is a complementary take on Anuj Ahooja's 'people, not platforms'. Moving on from both walled gardens and the Matrix-verse.

We're app-led and mobile first. All the work we did on the Patchwork Dashboard and Channel.org is still there, just hidden under the bonnet. Our servers - on Mastodon, Bonfire, and bridged to Bluesky - support the work of connecting and amplifying communities, in welcoming, inclusive and immersive social spaces.

Putting the social back into social media.