GNU social

GNU social

Screenshot of a GNU social website with Swedish localization.
Original author(s)	Evan Prodromou
Developer(s)	Evan Prodromou, Matt Lee, Mikael Nortfeldth and GNU social Developers
Stable release	1.1.2[1] / October 25, 2014 (2014-10-25)
Preview release	git
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	More than 25 languages.[2]
Type	Web application framework
License	Affero GPLv3+[3]
Website	gnu.io/social/

GNU social (previously known as StatusNet and once known as Laconica^[4]) is a FLOSS microblogging server written in PHP that implements the OStatus standard for interoperation between installations. While offering functionality similar to Twitter, GNU social seeks to provide the potential for open, inter-service and distributed communications between microblogging communities. Enterprises and individuals can install and control their own services and data.^[5][6]

Notable current deployments

GNU social has been deployed on hundreds of interoperating servers.^[7] Notable public deployments are quitter.se, quitter.es, quitter.no, quitter.is and gnusocial.no.^[8]

Features

• Updates via a XMPP/Jabber/Google Talk client
• OpenID authentication
• Federation support, which provides the ability to subscribe to notices by users on a remote service through the OStatus protocol
• SMS updates and notifications
• A Twitter-compatible API
• Hashtags
• Multilingual interface (using Gettext)
• Cross-posting to Twitter
• Facebook integration
• Groups (Bangtags)
• Automatic URL-shortening
• Geolocations and maps
• Live update of stream
• Attachments (add files, images, video, audio to dents)
• Embedding of content from other sites, like YouTube, Flickr, etc.
• Implementation of Salmon (protocol)
• Localised in dozens of languages on translatewiki.net (now discontinued)

Upcoming priority features were:^[9]

• More Ajax incorporation in the interface
• Cross-posting to Jaiku, Plurk, etc.
• Pull messages from Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, etc.

History

The first deployment (known as Laconica) was the Identi.ca open-microblogging service. Hosted by original StatusNet creators StatusNet Inc., Identi.ca offered free accounts to the public and serves as the co-flagship (along with freelish.us) for the installable version of StatusNet. The site has migrated to pump.io.

Version 0.9.0, released March 3, 2010, added support for OStatus, a new distributed update standard superseding OpenMicroBlogging.^[10][11]

In December 2012, Evan Prodromou announced "a wind-down" of the status.net hosted service so he could concentrate on a new open source activity stream server, pump.io.^[12] Consequently, Identi.ca will also be changed to pump.io. All in the last year before May 1, 2013 active accounts will be migrated.^[13] On July 10, 2013 Identi.ca switched over to running pump.io.^[14]

June 8, 2013 it was announced StatusNet would be merged into the GNU social project, along with Free Social.^[15]

Names

StatusNet was renamed from Laconica coinciding with the release of version 0.8.1 (aka "Second Guessing") of the StatusNet software.^[16]

StatusNet's name "simply reflects what our software does: send status updates into your social network."^[4]

Laconica's name was a reference to the Laconic phrase, a particularly concise or terse statement the likes of which are famously attributed to the leaders of Sparta (Laconia being the Greek region containing Sparta). In microblogging, all messages are forced to be very short due to the ~140 character limit on message size, thus they are all de facto laconic phrases.

See also

• Comparison of software and protocols for distributed social networking
• Comparison of microblogging services

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to StatusNet.

• Official website
• Official wiki[broken link]
• Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives GNU Social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister