Automattic Co-Authoring ActivityPub Plugin

After the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk back in October 2022, users who were disgruntled by the new leadership decided to leave the platform for pastures anew. One of the main alternatives for Twitter was Mastodon, an open-source microblogging platform created by Russian Software Developer, Eugen Rochko.

Over the last couple of months, major companies have come out in support of the backend 'engine', AcivityPub, which powers the likes of Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Misskey and more.

ActivityPub became a W3C Standard in 2018. Since then, its usage has exploded in popularity.

Recently, Automattic founder, Matt Mullenweg, announced that he was going to integrate ActivityPub into Tumblr which was acquired by the WordPress parent company in 2019.

And now, just this week, the AcivityPub plugin for WordPress has been updated with Automattic being added as a co-author which means that Automattic is planting its foot firmly into the Fediverse.

There are no immediate plans as to what Automattic is going to do with the plugin but it seems obvious that they would be looking to integrate it natively into WordPress (.org and .com)