The fediverse (commonly abbreviated to fedi)[1][2][3] is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".[4]
The majority of fediverse platforms are free and open-source software, and create connections between servers using the ActivityPub protocol. Some software still supports older federation protocols like OStatus, the Diaspora (stylized as diaspora*) protocol and Zot as well. As of August 2024, diaspora* is the only actively developed project classified under the original definition for fediverse that doesn't support ActivityPub.[citation needed]