A couple of years ago I was asked to help someone build an app for wild food foraging. The app would connect foragers in the UK to one another and allow them to share locations they have identified as places that (edible) wild food grows.
I declined.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has tried, and failed, to build a two-sided marketplace. The kind of platform where the value to "visitors" is directly proportional to the number of "contributors", and the value to "contributors" is directly proportional to the number of "visitors". The actual tech of the platform almost doesn't matter (see: Enshittification and why it's so easy for platforms to get away with)
But that might all be about to change, thanks to the Fediverse.
The Fediverse (a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is an ensemble of interconnected servers that are used for web publishing (such as microblogging, video sharing, and photo sharing) where users can interact with each other across different platforms and servers. Unlike traditional social networks which are controlled by a single organization (e.g., Facebook, Twitter/X), the Fediverse is made up of multiple different services, each running on different servers, but they can communicate with each other through a common set of protocols.
Mastodon is currently the top student in the fediverse, but there are fediverse-connected apps out there for all sorts of user-generated content.
If this works out and becomes a thing, we could see a new wave of opportunity for Indie Hackers to build two-sided marketplaces that "tap in" to the fediverse to achieve critical mass, without having to build the community from scratch.
You could make a wild food foraging app that scours federated posts from Mastodon or Lemmy to immediately provide value to both sides. At that point, the only differentiator will be what it should be - the quality of your platform.
There is no point to this post. I don't have a landing page to share with you all.
I'm just intrigued and cautiously optimistic as to the direction this part of the web is taking and I'd love to know your thoughts/doubts. Post a comment.