OStatus is an

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...

for decentralized social networking, allowing users on one service to send and receive status updates with users from another. The standard describes how a suite of various standards, including

Atom Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...

, Activity Streams, WebSub,

Salmon Salmon (; : salmon) are any of several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera ''Salmo'' and ''Oncorhynchus'' of the family (biology), family Salmonidae, native ...

, and

WebFinger WebFinger is a Communications protocol, protocol specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF in RFC:7033, RFC 7033 that allows for discovery of information about people and things identified by a URI. Information about a person migh ...

, can be used together, which enables different microblogging server implementations to communicate status updates between their

user Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...

s back-and-forth, in near real-time.

History

OStatus federation was first possible between servers running StatusNet, such as Status.net and Identi.ca, although Identi.ca later switched to pump.io. As of June 2013, a number of other

microblogging Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts or status updates. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the ...

applications and

content management systems A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

had announced that they intended to implement the standard. That same month, it was announced StatusNet would be merged into the GNU social project along with Free Social, a similar application itself forked from StatusNet. Following the first official release of GNU Social, a number of microblogging sites running StatusNet and Free Social began to transition to it to receive new updates to the software. But frustrations with the technology underpinning GNU Social and its complexity led a number of new server packages that aimed to be compatible with GNU Social using OStatus to shift focus to

ActivityPub ActivityPub is a Communication protocol, protocol and open standard for Decentralised system, decentralized Social networking service, social networking. It provides a Client–server model, client-to-server (C2S) API for creating and modifying c ...

, including

Mastodon A mastodon, from Ancient Greek μαστός (''mastós''), meaning "breast", and ὀδούς (''odoús'') "tooth", is a member of the genus ''Mammut'' (German for 'mammoth'), which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to ...

Pleroma Pleroma (, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers. It is used in Christian theological contexts, as well as in Gnosticism. The term also appears in the Epistle to the Colossians, which is traditionally attributed ...

and postActiv, a fork of GNU social.

Standards work

In January 2012, a

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

Community Group was opened to maintain and further develop the OStatus standard. However, this was eclipsed by the work of the

Federated Social Web Working Group, launched in July 2014. This working group focused on creating a newer standard, called

, which expanded on the protocols and design used in pump.io, which has since been standardized as a successor to OStatus.

Projects using OStatus

Current

* GNU social (formerly StatusNet)

Former

* Friendica *

References

{{Reflist

External links

OStatus Wiki
Microblogging software Communications protocols Software that federates via OStatus