i think this misses the point of the fediverse... we need to supplant those giant 3rd parties with something less corporate, more co-op.

sure, we can extend functionality and do cool new things while thats happening, but that migration is a big part of the fediverse movement. it needs to be somewhat familiar to those users migrating.

Maybe https://bonfirenetworks.org ?

Owncast is rather interesting to me. Self-hosted streaming platform that can use the ActivityPub to publish streaming notifications, if desired.

At a glance, Misskey and associated forks may appear to be Twitter-clones, but dig a little more and you'll find they're a lot more, for better and worse.

The interface is highly customizable, not just with some different colored themes nor a multi-column interface, but that you can stack page elements in columns and set up "antennae" or filters to surface posts including specified keywords and/or hashtags while excluding others via keywords/hashtags as well. There's also what they call "channels" which I think are sort of like groups or dedicated topics apart from hashtags to post to and discuss whatever the channel topic is.

Oh, and because it seems *key wants to have a little of everything, there's Pages, which is basically longform blog posting, and some versions include simple games. There's also options for some other widgets I've not mentioned here. It's genuinely pretty wild compared to the other federated microblogging services with how much flexibility it has and all that it has packed in.

I think the only other federated service I've found that's comparable in flexibility may be Hubzilla, albeit I got the impression it's less user friendly, but still, very customizable and a lot you could do with it.

https://fediverse.info/explore/projects

There are a few projects that give some idea a new spin. Most of them are about microblogging or alternative platforms for some existing concepts, though.

https://thirdroom.io is based on matrix, not activitypub, but it's trying to be some kind of federated 3d world.

If Ghost fulfil their wish to get payments and subscriptions working over the protocol then that would count. They said they think they can in their recent announcement. But then it seems they may have crypto in mind for it.

https://bonfirenetworks.org/ approach is quite unique, this might be what you are looking for

I think social media is a solved problem at this point, you'll need something radical or game changing to actually break through in this market. Combined with the fact that the fediverse is inherently much more difficult to monetize I don't see many companies taking on that challenge.

FOSS projects might though, but they tend to grow too slow to be disruptive.

We are building one since almost 10 months. It is just a week or two away from feature completion of v1. Hope to launch it soon. We have some innovation baked in and some coming later.

What do you have in mind? What kind of innovation or features are you thinking of?

All of those sites were inspired by previous sites, everything is some sort of iteration of something.

I think the open data projects have a fair potential for innovation. They need some kind of backbone for permanence which would need widespread federation, but they're a conceptually interesting addition to the Fediverse.

Edit: spelling ("to", not "YO!")

I will try and make a federated anime tracking website in summer. Not sure if that is unique though.

Slowly.app? It's like having a snail mail pen-pal.

Nostr

Late, but still: I dare say that what Mike Macgirvin has done.

Mistpark/Friendika/Friendica looks like and is marketed as a Facebook alternative. But it comes with extra features on top like a built-in file storage, and its actual killer feature has always been that it federates with everything that moves.

Red a.k.a. the Red Matrix used to handle much like Friendica on the surface, but it introduced nomadic identity and permissions as early as 2012.

Hubzilla, into which the Red Matrix was turned in 2015, is probably the most powerful of all Fediverse projects. It was the first Fediverse project to implement ActivityPub, two months before Mastodon. And it was the first nomadic one to actually kind of take off.

Finally, the latest offspring of 14 years (plus two days) of development since Mistpark is the streams repository which isn't as feature-heavy as Hubzilla, but the most innovative one, and it's constantly evolving. It will be there first that nomadic identity and even permissions beyond what Hubzilla has to offer will be implemented in ActivityPub. And it's likely that this will happen this year.