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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 ✨🙏✨

#Fediverse

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 I like everything about Friendica, but perhaps the most important thing is that you can create the closest thing to Facebook groups that you can see in the Fediverse.

mike6ixgolf reshared this.

in reply to Lorenzo

@enzoesco thank you Lorenzo! I deactivated my Facebook account 6 years ago so I'm not super familiar with group functionalities anymore. Is there anything that stands out for you in terms of things you could do?
in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 Facebook groups are the real added value of Facebook, because they are the places where people meet based on common interests. The general Facebook timeline, on the other hand, is confusing and you are always presented with the same topics.

In the Fediverse, the problem of the timeline is similar: you see a lot of content in a confusing way. The beauty of Friendica "groups" is that you can follow a "group" account like @Scuola - Gruppo Forum and you can receive all the posts of users who copy the "school group". Like an old distribution list

Dame_ reshared this.

in reply to Lorenzo

@enzoesco Yes, this. I loved being able to post to a named list (or “circle”) of users.

Lorenzo reshared this.

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 @Lorenzo @alysonsee 🌻 Its actually been claimed that G+ stole elements and ideas from diaspora. When G+ died many left for diaspora. Friendica still has way more features though.
in reply to 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. 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

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in reply to anubis2814

@anubis2814

The clash was mostly with the right wing circle on D*. They started to tag them and tried to bully them out. In federated environment that's actually not possible. A certain flame war came up, poisoned the environment but ended ultimately in nothing.
To a certain extent it was astonishing as there was some kind of live and let live gentlemen agreement between the different factions of anti centralized walled garden and and anti big brother coalition.

@_elena @enzoesco @alysonsee

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.

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 😭

in reply to Andrea Russo

Sorry for the usability issues. I would love having someone in the team who can do frontend stuff.

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in reply to Michael Vogel

@Michael Vogel @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 Don't worry: the console of a helicopter is more complicated than that of a car. However, if you want to fly or take off from impossible places, there is no alternative 🤣
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

in reply to Michael Vogel

@heluecht great to hear!

For what it's worth I've been using Friendica on my iPhone in Safari and on my Google Pixel using Chrome and its responsiveness is already amazing

in reply to Andrea Russo

@russandro
> the terrible things, like the difficulty of use

Even tho I have to or should respect your opinion, I guess it's simply imprecise and unfair.

#friendica is like a swiss knife with manual gear, it put's you in the drivers seat of as many decisions as possible.

Actually it's goal is complex, not just complicated, the amount of options makes it difficult to grasp at once.

The main problem in my opinion is that #siliconValley trained "users" to remain, even become stupid.
@_elena

in reply to mʕ•ﻌ•ʔm bitPickup

@mʕ•ﻌ•ʔm bitPickup

#friendica is like a swiss knife with manual gear, it put's you in the drivers seat of as many decisions as possible.


And Friendica isn't even that bad anymore. It's just that people are too used to pre-Musk Twitter and their favourite Mastodon mobile app.

I haven't used Friendica since the 2010s, but today's Friendica looks more user-friendly than today's Facebook, and Friendica is meant to be an alternative to Facebook.

I mean, there's still Hubzilla, a Friendica fork by Friendica's creator, which puts even vastly more features and options and settings than Friendica has (and how that's possible) behind Friendica's UI as it was in 2012.

Also, Friendica has out-right amazing user documentation. Hubzilla's user documentation is incomplete, what's there reads like a technical specification rather than a user manual, and parts of it are glaringly outdated, sometimes even still referring to Hubzilla as Red. At least for English-speaking folks, the most up-to-date and useful Hubzilla documentation in existence is hearsay.

@Andrea Russo @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #UIUX #UserFriendly #Friendica #Hubzilla

in reply to Jupiter Rowland

@jupiter_rowland

True.

I still wonder how Mike managed to sell Zuckerberg a guitar back in the days when he went to his music store.
I mean he definitely is a coder with nomadic identity, not a salesman ..
😀

youtube.com/watch?v=tt2EXWzMV1…

@russandro @_elena

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 😀

  • Channels (both user definable and algorithm based feeds)
  • Bidirectional integration in Tumblr and Bluesky
  • Posting connectors to Wordpress, the network formerly known as Twitter and some more
  • Import of feeds
  • Automatic redistribution of channel posts or feed posts
  • Groups (with integration to Lemmy)

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in reply to Antonella Ferrari

@ferrante awesome!

May I quote you in my piece? And if so, could you share a screenshot of a formatted post of yours as an example?

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 I don't often post with images to avoid taking up unnecessary space, but I've prepared an example post for you:

poliverso.org/display/0477a01e…


La regina degli scimpanzè: Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, la futura primatologa universalmente nota come Jane Goodall

Il 3 aprile 1934 nasceva a Londra Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, la futura primatologa universalmente nota come Jane #Goodall. Le sue ricerche sugli scimpanzé (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) hanno rivoluzionato l’etologia (branca della biologia che studia il comportamento degli animali nel loro ambiente naturale) e il modo di intendere la mente degli animali.

@Scienza e tecnologia

Ritratto in sanguigna di Jane Goodall

Goodall è ben consapevole della crisi in cui riversa il pianeta, ma ritiene che ancora esista qualcosa per cui valga la pena lottare. E di fronte ai tanti orrori ai quali assistiamo quotidianamente, crede che solo la speranza può dare la spinta per continuare a impegnarsi e non arrendersi. In questa battaglia, Goodall non si stanca di rivolgere il suo appello a tutti con tono fermo ma gentile, ed è proprio questo ad aver reso probabilmente la sua voce così potente e universalmente presente. Ciascun essere umano, in qualità di membro della società, consumatore ed elettore, può fare qualcosa ogni singolo giorno attraverso le sue scelte. Tuttavia, è necessario agire in fretta, prima che il poco tempo rimasto a disposizione scada. Questo è il suo messaggio.

L'articolo Ricorda 1934: nasce Jane Goodall è stato scritto da Viola Pacini ed è stato pubblicato su Lo Spiegone

Anteprima dell'articolo di Viola Pacini


Informa Pirata reshared this.

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

First of all, I would like to mention the development team, who are doing an incredible job.

I would emphasise the ability to communicate seamlessly with different networks. Bluesky and Tumblr have already been mentioned. In addition, Friendica also communicates with the diaspora. A Fediverse network with around 700,000 users that they can't see with other Fedi projects.

My personal highlights

  • import of RSS
  • Groups (platform-independent discussion boards similar to Lemmy, Kbin or nodebb)
  • Channel (user-defined timeline)
  • Circles (to hold closed discussions with selected people)
  • and the possibility to use many profiles under one account (for public, thematic or private use)
  • relays (you may know them from Bluesky as feeds)
  • the possibility to communicate with external people from Friendica via e-mail

Of course, the variety of possibilities makes the use much more complex than in other Fedi projects. In my experience, however, most new users get along very well with Friendica if they don't even know what the platform has to offer and don't overwhelm themselves ;)

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

I also answer: for me the added value of Friendica is that, even without being a programmer, I can manage multiple users, partially automated, to create thematic accounts. An example are the users @cybersecurity @piratepost @privacypost @privacypride @notizie and my Friendica counterpart @informapirata@poliverso.org that I govern from my main account @macfranc 😅
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

in reply to mike6ixgolf

@M6G @Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸


> i also unable to vote in mastodon polls for some reason.

Friendica does not support Mastodon polls

> i'm not too familiar with groups or channels.
> 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.

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.

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@Jonathan Lamothe I remember installing and uninstalling it in the first few weeks of Poliverso, because it was giving me problems. @Michael Vogel do you think it works well? Can I try installing it again?
in reply to Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso

@Poliverso - notizie dal fediverso I use it pretty heavily and have not had any significant issues. That said, I only discovered it within the last year. Perhaps earlier versions were buggier?
Unknown parent

alysonsee 🌻
@hankg Yes. I switched to Friendica from Diaspora in 2017. I wanted to connect with users on Activity Pub platforms without losing my connections on Diaspora.
Unknown parent

Informa Pirata

@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 ✏️✨📸

in reply to Informa Pirata

@Informa Pirata

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!


How would that work exactly?

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

@Elena Rossini ✏️✨📸 peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEY… I've made the only tutorial on friendica on the interwebs. I have yet to get around to making pt 3 out of 5 as most were reworked from my 2020 tutorial when it was a VERY different website, and channels are brand new. What I personally love about Frienidca is its literally all the best features of every single social media platform rolled into one. Myspace/FB/G+/twitter/Tumblr?/and now with channels IG and tiktock. I also love that its the one ring to rule them all in terms of interconnectedness. I'd never give it up for mastodon because it would require losing all my diaspora friends here. Once they fixed the image issue that plagued them for so long, I deleted my mastodon account, and there are a few video upload issues they are working on that make me hang onto my pixelfed account still.
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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 ✏️✨📸

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@Jonathan Lamothe Let me give you an example: due to an incomprehensible choice of the Mastodon development staff, Mastodon does not support ActivityPub groups well. Therefore, Mastodon users cannot manage Friendica groups, Lemmy communities, PieFeed channels and gup.pe groups well and see them mixed in that meaningless blob that is the general timeline!
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
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.

in reply to Informa Pirata

@informapirata @fabrixxm @heluecht @tio @valhalla @russandro @hankg @anubis2814 I use groups a lot and I would like to have an app for Mastodon that lets me see them in a rational way, also because by putting groups in Mastodon lists you don't see anything and with groups not even the notifications work

Fuori Sede reshared this.

in reply to Informa Pirata

@Informa Pirata I mean, I know what you're asking for, but I believe a lot of that has to be implemented at the server level.
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)

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

@Elena ``of Valhalla'' @Fabio

> OTOH, if, as you say, friendica has no market, why should somebody write an app for mastodon and then add support for Friendica?

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)


> (which I don't think is going to take significantly less effort than just writing an app for friendica)?

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.

> (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)

This is exactly what happens today... 😁

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

Thank you SO MUCH for all your insightful responses to my toot about #Friendica and for boosting it. I really appreciate! 💗

The first draft of my post about it for #TheFutureIsFederated is under way. It’s a bit overwhelming because Friendica has so many brilliant features and you’d need a BOOK to cover them all. I’ll do a Top 5.

And apologies for being slow to reply to your mentions but I’m with family on an island with no WiFi at home and spotty 4G (more like 2G). This GIF is me right now

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Unknown parent

Dame_
@hankg I need to spend more time using Friendica then . Is there a large instance like Mastodon.social so I have access to a lot of traffic? Are there native clients? I think no native clients might have been what turned me away
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.

Unknown parent

utopiArte
Is it difficult to publish it in f-droid?
I guess lot's of us could get the app from there and test it!

Anban Govender reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@Jonathan Lamothe @Informa Pirata I use pin-to-home and the features are amazing. I don't need a client for it, but I don't know if that's an option on iphone
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.

Unknown parent

Michael Vogel
Stable or "stable"?
Unknown parent

utopiArte

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.

in reply to ⁂ Elena Rossini ⁂ ✏️✨📸

I had mentioned to you that images included in my friendica posts were not visible in Mastodon. I wanted to let you know that I recently switched to a diffierent friendica server (social.trom.tf) and I just posted with an image and it was visible in Mastodon! So the problem is not universal to Friendica.
in reply to 🌈 Kevin Bowersox 🖖

@SnerkRabbledauber thank you for letting me know this Kevin! 🙏

Quick question: how do you find the server speed of your new instance?