Newsletter platform Ghost, an open source competitor to Substack, is now connected to the fediverse, also known as the open social web. Federated apps run on the protocol ActivityPub, which powers apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Threads, Flipboard, and others, allowing posts published on one app to be seen and engaged with by those on other federated platforms.
Ghost said last year that it was working on an integration with ActivityPub, which would allow its publishers to share their blog posts with the broader open social web.
The company expected the integrations to go live last year. However, Ghost this week announced the launch of its social web beta, which now allows any site running on its Ghost Pro subscription to try out the new ActivityPub integration.
The beta feature is still in active development, the company notes in its help documentation, but is expected to ship in a more finalized state in the Ghost 6.0 release.
When Ghost Pro users connect their blog or newsletter to the fediverse, others across the open social web will be able to follow their account’s handle. This handle is a combination of “@index,” representing the home page of the publication, followed by the domain name (@yoursite.com).
Ghost says users will soon be able to customize the @index part of their @[email protected] handle.
Users on federated apps will then be able to follow the Ghost publisher’s posts, as well as interact with them by liking, replying, or reposting.
To help Ghost publishers also participate in the fediverse and build their readership, Ghost also launched a social web reader. Here, users can browse a “feed” of the short-form content shared across the fediverse, including posts from services like Mastodon and Threads.
In a separate area called the “Inbox,” Ghost users can keep up with long-form content, like articles published on Ghost or WordPress, the popular publishing platform that integrated with the fediverse in 2023.
“Think of the Inbox screen like your email inbox. When you follow other publications on the social web, new articles they publish will show up here,” Ghost’s help page explains. “Clicking on a post will open an inline reader view, right inside Ghost, and when you get to the end you’ll be able to like, repost or reply.”
With the integration of these two feeds into Ghost’s admin, Ghost will also now allow its publishers to directly post short-form content to the fediverse, helping them to build their reputation and following on the open social web.
Ghost’s Reader also alerts users of interactions like follows, replies, likes, and reposts in its “Notifications” section. Plus, users can customize their Profile page to offer a preview of their social web account, following/followers, and their content, both short and long-form.
Later, the company hopes to more deeply integrate users’ social web profiles with Ghost memberships, but for now, they operate independently from one another. Other coming features include tools to block, report, and mute people or add images or media to notes and replies.
There are some compatibility issues with the Ghost Reader as well, most notably with Meta’s Threads. The company says that Ghost users can search for and find Threads users’ profiles, but no interactions work because Threads blocks them. (The issue is on Threads’ side and Ghost suggests that users mention Instagram head Adam Mosseri to fix it.)
To try the Ghost social web beta, Pro subscribers can head to the Ghost Admin and then enable the beta under Settings and then Labs.
Today, Ghost is used by several notable publications including Casey Newton’s Platformer, 404 Media, David Sirota’s The Lever, Tangle, Jason Calacanis’s Inside, SFist, and others.
