The Future of Distributed Social Media on WordPress

Abha:
Hello, I’m Abha Thakor, and we’re here for Do the Woo. It’s another WordPress Way. Today, we’re talking about the future of distributed social media in WordPress. It can come to WordPress, and the joy I have today is that I get to have a time machine. Now, for all those people who love the film Back to the Future, which is out again, it’s a really good time to have a time machine. We have with us today in the studio Matthias, who is the open web leader at Automattic and a full-stack developer, and we’ve got Robert Windisch, a WordPress agency owner who has been contributing to WordPress since 2005. He’s come in with a space machine that will take us forward in time and back in time. Just hoping he’s also brought some cake and refreshments because, as you know, we always like to know what people are cooking as part of this show too. So, Robert and Matthias, thank you very much for joining us today.

Robert:
Very happy to be here.

Matthias:
Yeah, thanks for having us.

Abha:
Now, Robert, I am intrigued. How far into the future are we going to go today?

Robert:
Just seven years. Just around the block.

Abha:
See, fashions might have changed by then, but will your hat with all your badges still be fashionable by then? That is a question. Or will you have something else?

Robert:
No, more people will wear the hat because it’s so fashionable that I started a trend with it.

Abha:
So watch out, folks. The hat with the WordPress badges is coming to an outlet near you soon. So, Robert, you’ve had a vision, haven’t you?

Robert:
Yes, for a while now.

Abha:
And this vision has had a little bit of an outing so far just in German. So, this is going to be the first time that you’re actually talking about this vision in English to an international audience. We’re quite excited to have you here today, and you’re going to take us forward seven years. So, okay, we’re going to jump up onto your time machine. Where are we going to go first?

Robert:
So, we go to a time where the WordPress market share is 60%. Everybody can just breathe this in. Just think about the current number. And we are now at 60%. Another thing that is very delightful for people who are staying in the past of, I think, 2024 is that we have young people at WordCamps and in the WordPress community.

Abha:
Now, just to clarify, I know we’ve had this conversation before we went on, but young people can be right up to college age, post-grad age, early twenties, even early thirties.

Robert:
I’m talking about twenty-something.

Abha:
Twenty-somethings. Okay.

Robert:
So, we had this at the WordCamp, and someone who was 32 really saw themselves as a young person. We needed to object to that; 30 is not a young person in my definition. It’s a person that currently is not in the WordPress space, only if they are dragged in by their parents, most likely.

Abha:
So, for the people out there who are in their thirties and now feel that they’re not young, don’t worry, we think you’re young. Age is in your mind. But we get what you mean—it’s about attracting those people who may not currently be in the WordPress space unless they have friends or family who have encouraged their usage of WordPress, and it’s trying to get them involved on their own criteria and using it the way they want to use it.

Robert:
Yes.

Abha:
Okay.

Robert:
So, WordPress is seen as a social network. When people interact with WordPress, they’re using the WordPress app, and they simply do not care that it’s websites on the internet. For them, it’s just a social network where they can interact with the content, as you would right now with other social networks. It’s just that WordPress is serving this as a product, as a social network on the open web.

Abha:
And that would all be through this new WordPress app?

Robert:
The app we already know; it’s just that in seven years, it’s so far ahead that it can simply be used as a consuming experience and not only as a publishing experience. In 2024, you publish with it, but you cannot really consume content with it.

Abha:
So, it’s going to be pretty much the center of how people consume content, publish content, and use content?

Robert:
WordPress will still be in competition with other social networks. Just think of the next TikTok and the next Instagram, whatever they are called—”Squishies” or whatever they might be named in seven years that are coming up. It’s just one of the social networks. People can choose to have their loved ones and the people or the content that they are looking into.

Abha:
It sounds really good, though. I do like the name Squishies, and if that takes off, we heard it here first. How do we get to that?

Robert:
So, the bad news is, for everybody listening, they need to be active in that. We all need to produce content. And I’m not talking about business content or writing on your business websites about things that your business does, but about really—and I don’t want to use the word, but it’s the easiest descriptive way—mundane content. Like people posting about their breakfast ages ago. It doesn’t need to be breakfast, but something in regard to that. We’re talking about photos, videos, small texts—just normal content. And then comes the other part of the homework: we need to interact with each other on the open web. That’s the downside—ourselves need to be active in that.

Abha:
So, if we do that… We’ll come back to a bit more detail about that in a minute, but as we’re still seven years ahead, how is this going to be different, and what is it that excites you about it?

Robert:
The difference is, it’s not different than, for example, Instagram, because everybody can do it right now. The difference is that we use WordPress as the way of doing that, and we have an experience that people can simply use. It’s not only that normal users put content out on the web to express themselves, but also the same site can run an e-commerce store and all the possibilities WordPress has. But a normal user who stumbled into this because someone said to them, “I saw this on WordPress,” can simply start right away. And by not using these closed-source publication platforms, they can be part of the open web. It brings back something that was around in WordPress, like 10 or 15 years ago, when people really exchanged ideas with each other. Remember when we had all our comment sections on our WordPress websites? All of this can be simply reused again, and the starting point is ourselves.

Abha:
Sounds quite cool. So how did you get this vision?

Robert:
I was speaking with someone at the first in-person WordCamp Europe again—it was Porto in 2022. I asked what they were looking forward to in WordPress, and they said, “What about the new things in Gutenberg?” And I thought, “But that’s not our problem right now.” If we look at the mission of WordPress—democratizing publishing—and the philosophy in WordPress on how to achieve this mission, I realized we have bigger problems than the next block or feature we add. For me, it was a moment of realization: if the people active in the WordPress ecosystem don’t talk about how to get people back to express themselves, and only focus on, as I coin it, “democratizing business websites,” instead of going back to democratizing publishing, then we have an issue. So that means everyone who is currently using Instagram, TikTok, or similar platforms is a potential WordPress user, and we’re simply not addressing them. My normal work life was with enterprise websites, and I thought, “Okay, we have a big problem here.” If almost nobody is addressing this, we need to talk about it. So, I started talking to others about it, and surprisingly, almost nobody was speaking publicly about this topic.

Abha:
It could be quite amazing—great connectivity and just an opportunity for people to own their own content and have the freedom of using the open web. So it is definitely something to look forward to. I’m going to bring Matthias in. Matthias, you’re obviously very excited about this area of work and have been focused on it for quite some time. For you, why is it so important that we interact and help create this distributed social media in WordPress?

Matthias:
I think the idea is very similar to what Robert said at the beginning. It was a personal thing. I fell in love with the idea of blogging, and as Robert already mentioned, commenting and interactions between different blogs. I still love the initial idea of pingbacks. When social media took off around 2008 or 2009, I tried to keep the momentum for blogging and find solutions to improve social interactions between users, blogs, and content without using central social media. Since I used WordPress, I started that on WordPress.

Abha:
And the idea of actually decentralizing it and giving people more control also addresses some of those issues we’ve seen in terms of greater privacy and wanting control of personal data. But does it also create a better user experience?

Matthias:
I think that’s the key point because social media took off due to a far better experience than WordPress offered. If you compare all the social interactions possible on social media, using a single account in one app, with what you need in the WordPress ecosystem, it’s vastly different. In WordPress, things like RSS let you subscribe to content using a tool, but it’s one-way; you can only subscribe to content. You have to leave your app, go to the site, fill in forms, and then there’s subscribing to answers. On some blogs, you might find “remind me via email” when someone comments or replies to your comment, and that’s yet another tool. With email, you also can’t directly respond. So, you have the RSS reader, email, and blog comment systems, and they’re all disjointed—completely unlike the experience on social media. So, in the end, I think it’s about finding something that’s at least close to the social interactions on Facebook, Instagram, and others, while remaining decentralized and working on your blog.

Abha:
Which has so many benefits. It’s a bit like having a 360-degree extension of yourself so that you don’t have to, as Robert talked about, go to one thing to do this and another to do that. It can all be done in one place, but it’s not controlled by multiple platform owners. It should give us a chance to create more content and be more creative without worrying about what platform we have to use, by simply going to WordPress to do it all.

Matthias:
Exactly.

Abha:
Thank you for going through that. I’m going to come back to you a bit more on that in a minute as well, but I’m going to go back to Robert for a second. So, Robert, you’ve talked about the future meaning having more content in the open web. Does that also mean having more content that is useful and relevant to us all?

Robert:
“Relevant” is a hard word for breakfast photos, and that’s both a good and a bad thing. There’s no problem with AI in that regard—or no problem; there is no harm in AI for that because AI needs content. When I was thinking about how this would transform in seven years, I thought about how AI would play into this. My thought was that AI will be happy to parse content from genuine human people, fostering their relationships or public exchanges with each other. It can also be private things, because all things are possible in the open web. I’m very much looking forward to that because it will mean everyone, including people I know who currently don’t put out content, can share things they care about. I’m really looking forward to having exchanges with both people I know and people I don’t yet know. That’s the fun—having people I can see and respond to that I wouldn’t normally cross paths with.

Abha:
It sounds like a very brave new world. We’ve had a few of those over the years, but I think it is that next stage of WordPress, isn’t it? It’s that future we’re talking about. Also, will this idea and vision mean more potential inclusion so that we’ve got people who you’ve talked about who may not currently be using apps to put out their content? Do you see it as a vehicle for those people, giving them a new tool that can do all these different things in one place?

Robert:
The future will not—I cannot say that we are almost close to utopia, so I don’t want to give people a false sense of “everything is solved.” Facebook has relationships with countries where using Facebook is free. WordPress, or democratizing publishing, can’t compete with that, or with free internet providers in regions where data is very expensive. So, I’m not saying, “Yes, trust me, follow me. I know the coordinates of utopia.” I’m just saying that whatever we tried in the past in democratizing publishing, there is a vast area we simply haven’t addressed with a product for this segment. We’re simply ignoring this part of WordPress because it’s really hard work; it’s like what Matthias said—it’s a lot to do. It’s about combining all these things, and for us to get the product ready for that is something I’ve tried different ways to get people’s attention on. And that’s why I decided I needed a new way of telling the story: how to get everyone back to—not just blogging—but to publish content or express themselves again.

Abha:
And that is a lovely way of looking at it, too—expressing yourself. That links nicely back to what Matthias was saying a bit earlier as well. Matthias, if we think about it as a tool for expressing ourselves, publishing, and connecting with each other, do you see this as a real way for us to advance democratizing publishing?

Matthias:
In an ideal world, yes, but there are a lot of technical challenges to overcome to make that happen. There is already great movement toward decentralized networks that started with Mastodon, for example, but there’s still a long way to go. I would say we are now at the biggest movement, or perhaps the best time, to talk about decentralized networks in combination with WordPress. There has never been anything near the current situation, so now is the best time.

Abha:
I think inviting people to be part of that is wonderful, too, because if this is the best time to take this journey forward and reach those audiences and users who may not have seen that they can use these kinds of tools, it would really advance the idea of democratizing publishing.

Matthias:
One thing I liked about your thoughts on content quality, and I would say it’s not necessarily better quality, but with WordPress, you at least have the possibility to improve the quality of your writing. Most social networks nowadays limit the number of characters you can use. I don’t know the character limit on Twitter, but on Mastodon, it’s 500 characters. With WordPress, you can get around that. So, it’s still up to the writer. You could use WordPress to microblog and simply share photos of your meal, but it also allows you to write strong and meaningful content in a decentralized way.

Abha:
And also, if we build on what we’re learning with blocks and Gutenberg and that distraction-free writing, all of that is part of that journey. It makes it easier, simplifies formulating ideas, and allows people to share what fascinates them and begin those conversations. You’ve talked about reaching that younger audience—those in their twenties and early thirties who are not currently using these kinds of tools. How do you see the future being different for them? How do you see them connecting with this kind of adventure?

Robert:
I need to jump on the last statement—having a 20-second video to explain something complex in a good way is, sorry, almost better than having two or 10 paragraphs of explanation. Many people like to dive into Wikipedia, but the majority of users, as we see from social media trends, prefer platforms that support these brief, impactful formats. For me, the future is not just about Mastodon or WordPress and piles of text. The future I see is in YouTube Shorts, Instagram, TikTok—but in a way that uses the open web. I see people expressing themselves in videos and photos, so the question is, how can we help them do this with WordPress? How can we make WordPress so good that they can use it? Currently, if you publish something on WordPress, you’re shouting into the void; nobody will see it. That’s why at every WordCamp, people using WordPress take the link they just created, post it on social media, and write something about it, or they just post directly on social media. So, for us, to ensure network effects of growth, we need to serve people with the content they want to have, or with the format they prefer. And that, I’m sorry to say, is not text for the majority. Text can remain a niche, but most people express themselves with videos and photos.

Abha:
And we’re talking non-business content here, aren’t we? Not, say, news-type content?

Robert:
If you just open a normal social media website, you’ll see the content there. Yes.

Matthias:
I think we don’t disagree there because, with WordPress, you decide what to publish, and you aren’t limited by any platform. That’s the most important thing. You don’t have to stick with text; you can decide per post. That’s the main difference compared to current social media.

Abha:
And I think that is what we’re seeing in releases too—that you can move seamlessly now between different modes of creativity and communication. You could start, as you said, with text, but you don’t have to stay with text. You can go off to video, images, all sorts. But it’s also having that reach on social media. And for clarity, we’re talking about content on WordPress, but it could apply to content on any other software shared on social media too. It creates that one-stop-shop where you control everything you want to publish. Let’s talk about that one tool a little more so that people can understand what it might look like as it evolves. In our journey seven years ahead, how do you see that tool existing?

Robert:
For most users, it will be a mobile app of WordPress, like on iOS or Android. They’ll simply consume content, which is different from now. They’ll have their consumption experience on the app and can react and publish content with it. In the background, it’s a WordPress installation with plugins—a “distribution,” which isn’t a common word in WordPress, but essentially, you use these five plugins or so, and that makes a WordPress site part of the distributed social media of the open web. The WordPress mobile app processes everything, giving users a feed they can scroll through like any other social media app. It also allows users to react to something, and the reaction is on their own WordPress site, going out to the open web.

Abha:
Which means you’re also controlling those reactions, where they appear, and how people see them. So, it really puts a lot more control back with the user, which has to be a good thing.

Robert:
Yes, and as you hear me, I avoid the topic of data control because, from conversations I’ve had, I know that most people don’t care about it. For the majority, if the interface and platform deliver what they want, then data ownership is like the cherry on top that we’re giving them.

Abha:
Many people talk about how they react to stories they read on social media, but that reaction has no reflection on their own site. This kind of control of information will appeal to people, not just around who owns the data, but sharing it more seamlessly on their main communication platform. This approach will certainly appeal to the way we see 20-year-olds using the internet now—wanting fewer apps but more connected tools. We’re also seeing a trend of people saying they have too many apps and shorter retention times for those apps due to storage, affordability, and other reasons. So, all of this has got to be a good

thing. Matthias, how do we actually start looking at what this needs to look like and get feedback from the generation you’re trying to target?

Matthias:
That’s a tricky one. I’ve had many discussions with friends who have nearly adult kids, and it’s difficult. Kids nowadays grew up with a completely different usage of social media, so they don’t care much if they have to recreate accounts or lose data. It’s challenging to get them back. I agree with Robert—it’s hard to argue with “own your data” and “don’t lose any data.” To be honest, I’m not sure. I’ve tried from a technical perspective to provide something that works, but convincing users to not use social media and use their blogs instead is a tough challenge.

Abha:
Can we do this now? Can people try it now and use existing plugins to see if they like it?

Matthias:
It depends—yes and no. Yes, because there’s currently a movement with many decentralized platforms speaking the same language, so to say. It’s like an email version of social media, where it doesn’t matter where you create your account; you can follow others on different accounts, self-host your instance, or even use WordPress for that and communicate with each other. But your friends have to be on it too, so it’s a niche movement. Meta has shown interest and started implementing it on Threads, their new platform, which I hope will make a difference long-term.

Abha:
Matthias, for people wanting to try this, where would they go?

Matthias:
The plugin that works best, at least from my perspective, is ActivityPub, which solves many of the problems I mentioned earlier. It allows followers of a blog to use one tool for everything—they can subscribe to a blog, comment, like, share, and interact, while the blog owner can do that too. The blog owner can reply to comments from a decentralized social network through their comments section. It’s called the ActivityPub plugin, but it’s limited. Currently, WordPress is only the publishing side; you can’t follow users on your WordPress installation. But if others follow you, you can have the full interaction with them on your blog. For the following part, there’s another plugin built by a friend of mine, Alex Kirk, called Friends. It implements the following part. Another plugin called Enable Mastodon Apps solves the app issue. With those three plugins, you can use a Mastodon app to publish content to your WordPress site, see your followers and followings, and interact directly from a social networking app. Together, they provide a social-network-like experience with WordPress.

Abha:
We’ll include those plugin links in the show notes for anyone who wants to link them directly. All these plugins are available on wordpress.org in the repository. As we look forward to this future seven years ahead, these plugins will evolve, and new ones will emerge. Matthias, how long have you supported this particular plugin and approach for WordPress?

Matthias:
I’ve been working on this current plugin since 2019, but I started working on the open web and finding decentralized communication solutions with WordPress around 2008 or 2009.

Abha:
So this really is a very exciting time, seeing these ideas come to fruition. People have an opportunity to do homework, as Robert talked about, and take part in what this will look like. They don’t need a spaceship, although I’m still hoping Robert finds me a spaceship to do it. Robert, I know that you want people to come and test this, be part of it, and give feedback. How can they do this, and what’s the best way for them to tell their friends how to get involved?

Robert:
I wouldn’t directly go to “Friends” because if we show them the current state of things—sorry, Matthias—if we show them the current state, we might lose our only chance to convince them to use the WordPress Open Web. For me, the most compelling idea right now is that we need to start this on our own. Everyone already in WordPress, everyone saying, “Someone should do something,” should start by doing it themselves. We all need to set up a new installation of WordPress or use our own website for this. That becomes our profile moving forward, and we simply use it in WordPress. If users of this open web social media stumble over anything, they should come forward, go to the GitHub pages, and put in issues or pull requests. By using the software ourselves and improving it to a level we’d confidently share with others, we can reach the next level—then we can talk to our relatives, get others involved, and create a network effect. I’ve had conversations with people saying, “I tried one plugin, but then drifted away from my WordPress.” So we need to be at a stage where we don’t silently uninstall these plugins. We need to move this forward if we want a higher market share and young people at WordCamps. Our product needs to be better for most users looking to express themselves or democratize publishing.

Abha:
So people need to go to their current personal WordPress website, or set up a new installation of WordPress, install these two plugins, use them, try them, and give feedback—the best way to give feedback is on GitHub. And I’m sure you’ll give us a link to include in the show notes. Do you also want people to highlight opportunities they might see for using it? And is that something to share on GitHub, or should it be a conversation they start having at meetups?

Robert:
Yes, because we have all these developers, designers, product people, and WordPress builders. They can come forward with, “Hey, from a design perspective, this would be better.” I think Alex, who develops Friends, and Matthias, who develops ActivityPub, would be very open to design feedback or visibility UI suggestions. They’d also be happy to review developer pull requests so these solutions can improve and serve more users.

Abha:
And for people who listen to the show and are also part of the WooCommerce side, they can help too, right? They can try this on their own personal sites, install these plugins, and see how it could enhance content for them as well.

Robert:
The beauty of this is that if we have a higher WordPress market share and all these people who might otherwise use Mastodon or Instagram want to sell something and are using the WordPress social network, guess what their solution might be? This benefits all of the open web and especially WordPress. If someone is already using WordPress, for instance, they can move from the WordPress-provided social media space to a hosting company, level up to a business website, and level up again to a store. That’s the benefit for everyone using WordPress. If you want to grow the market share and have a better way to do it, I’m very open. My current plan is simply to democratize publishing, and I think this could really help us in the future to convince more people to use WordPress.

Abha:
And just going back to this idea of the open web, for those still getting to grips with it, Matthias, you mentioned this is an exciting time for distributed social media. But what could it mean for the open web, and how could it help drive things forward?

Matthias:
That’s a tricky one. In the past, it was hard to argue for installing some of these plugins because it required others to install them too. That was a big hurdle. Now, however, there’s already a decentralized social network with millions of users. Installing something on WordPress now provides an opportunity for a real audience, so you don’t have to argue for it as much. It’s like the chicken-and-egg problem—installing it allows millions of users to follow your blog, and that’s exciting. Not only that, but they can also interact with it. It’s not just cross-posting; it’s real following, real interaction. Comments made on a decentralized network come back to your blog as classic comments. If you reply to that comment, it flows back to anyone who subscribed to your blog. It’s real decentralized communication that works now.

Abha:
Love it. That might have been a difficult question, but you answered it beautifully. I love the idea that the interaction comes back to you. I’m just hoping that when this time travel machine comes back, it brings some nice cake and maybe pizza as well, Robert. And we’ve been talking today about how everyone can benefit and get involved. That’s how we grow community too, isn’t it? It helps us all connect and be part of something new, keeping WordPress fresh and exciting. Now, you know the question I’m going to ask as we finish. I’ll go to Matthias first because Robert has had more time to think about it. Matthias, we like to think and share about foods that help us in our adventures of creating, thinking, and developing. It also links to our other shows about inclusion. So, what do you like to cook when you’re doing your best idea thinking and creating? I see your thinking face on!

Matthias:
That’s really tricky. What I want to cook when working on all of that…

Abha:
What helps get those creative juices flowing? It could be something that just relieves concentration and helps you find another part of the picture.

Matthias:
I’d say it’s pizza because every time it’s different, and I simply love it. So, I’ll go with pizza.

Abha:
Good answer! I’m sure lots of people listening can relate to that too. I won’t hold you to the toppings just yet; we may actually get you on-air making it sometime. So, just keep that in mind because we’ve been working on some plans. Robert, I presume you’d have to eat whatever it was with all the badges on. So, what would be your go-to for cooking that helps you come up with these interesting visions for the future of WordPress?

Robert:
As you know, I’m the opposite of a cook. For me, the ingredient I need to create a vision for the future is having conversations with people. It’s not something you eat, but you can have conversations while eating things.

Abha:
Absolutely.

Robert:
So for me, it’s more about the exchange I have with people and the interesting questions they pose to me. Otherwise, I’m very picky when I eat food, as you know. I’m not picky with whatever’s on the table, but I am special in that regard.

Abha:
We know that chocolate is a great leveler and stimulant for people to start conversations in the WordPress space. Everyone has their own story and cultural version of sweet dishes in the WordPress community. So, Matthias, I’ll make sure we extend an invitation to you because the open web hasn’t seen anything yet. When we get cooking, it’ll be a wonderful way of extending yourself, which we’ve talked about with WordPress apps, because you can do it all simultaneously.

You can talk about your content on one side, take a picture of your cooking, share what you’re making—it all fits together. Exactly. I can see Matthias nodding at me now, thinking, “Yes, this all works together.” But actually, that’s what collaboration is about. People can bring in food, different ways of doing things, and different cultures. That’s the most exciting part of this new WordPress app: it can harness all those different ways of thinking, doing, and being. It can be that perfect pizza. Oh no, now I definitely want pizza. So, we’ve just got to keep trying, and we have homework from the man with the hat. Unless you want to say no to the man with the hat and not do the homework—which I wouldn’t recommend—please check the show notes, download these plugins, and give it a try. Let’s give feedback; it’s about making this future together. It’s about harmonizing and creating new aspects, seeing what works in your environment, your way of doing things, and for your demographic. What better opportunity than that? And you heard it here first on the WordPress Way. Thank you, Matthias and Robert, for joining us, and we look forward to hearing much more about how this progresses and being part of it because at Do the Woo, we like to be part of learning and exploring. So join us again in a future show. Thank you to you both.

Matthias:
Thank you.

Robert:
Thank you for the invitation,