Fedibook week 7

I'm back from a week of network installation work in Germany — doing my day job as a network engineer. Not much time left for Fedibook, but rest assured: I've been listening, and I'm back.

I'm genuinely humbled by the attention and the time the first test users have put into exploring what Fedibook could be. Every time I check, more people have joined. At the time of writing, there are 65 users on fedibook.net — and at least one other Fedibook instance is already running out there.

Looking at the server list — which records every server fedibook.net has communicated with — those 65 users together have a network spanning 567 other ActivityPub servers. That's wild.

This week

I've been squashing bugs and wrestling with the group feature. Group support across the wider Fediverse is the hard nut to crack, but I think most of it is working now — group posts are shared between Fedibook servers and, with some effort, to Mastodon via private DMs. Comments don't come across to Mastodon yet, though. Sorry about that.

Next week

New demo instance

With so many people jumping onto fedibook.net, I want to take better care of those users rather than constantly shipping loosely tested features. I'm planning a new test instance where releases can be validated before hitting "production." That means a new server — easy enough — plus some new release practices on the Git repo. Something to learn. Good.

Better test environment

Testing a federated application has turned out to be genuinely complicated. To make real progress on groups, I need a more complete lab setup — probably 2–3 Fedibook instances and a test Mastodon server. Let's see how far I get.

Roadmap

A proper project needs a roadmap — I know. But I've deliberately held off, because I wanted a playful start: get something running, let people see it, collect feedback, and go from there. That's why the reception has meant so much. By joining in, asking questions, and requesting features, you're actively helping shape Fedibook.

Friends & Groups

For the roadmap — and for your feedback — I want to remind both myself and the enthusiastic early users of the original goal: build a friendly experience for people who aren't already deep in the Fediverse. All those friends still stuck on Big Social. It's easy to get carried away with everything the Fediverse can do — but that world already exists. The gap to fill is the onramp.

The future

I'm also starting to think about building a team around Fedibook. A good team could accelerate development and give the project long-term life.

That said, good teams take real effort to manage, and decisions can slow down. For now, I'm keeping most of the development in my own hands — I want to show a clearer direction first, and honestly, I still have things to learn before I'm ready to lead a team well.

One thing worth remembering: the Fedibook code isn't mine to hoard. It's out there, and you're welcome to take it wherever you want. Contributions are also very welcome — just start small. I'm still learning how to run a Git-controlled project, so give me room to get the testing and merging process under my belt.