Openvibe, a Multi-Social-Network App for Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads (Supposedly), and Nostr

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch “Automattic and Others Back Openvibe, an App That’s Unifying the Open Social Web”:

Launched in 2024, Openvibe initially supported three of the more prominent open social networks, all of which operate using different protocols: Mastodon uses ActivityPub, Bluesky runs on AT Protocol, and Nostr powers a number of third-party apps. Openvibe later added support for Instagram Threads, as that app became further integrated with ActivityPub and opened itself up to the developer community.

As CEO Matej Svancer explained at the time, the idea behind his app was to offer users a more friendly and “easy-to-use gateway” to the open social web. Because of the different protocols these networks utilize, it can be difficult for newcomers who end up having to switch apps or limit their engagement to just their preferred platform.

But Openvibe doesn’t just let people stay connected with friends across all these services in a combined timeline, it also allows cross-posting to multiple networks at once.

I just gave it a try, and my take is that Openvibe is definitely interesting, but it’s not for me, and I’m not really sure who it is for. I signed into all three of my personal accounts that Openvibe supposedly supports: Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. I got a home timeline that mashes together all the posts from my Bluesky and Mastodon accounts. I don’t see any errors related to Threads, but I don’t see any posts from Threads. That kind of makes sense because Threads doesn’t offer an API that allows for full third-party clients. Threads does have an API for posting, so I presume my Threads account in Openvibe is write-only. Openvibe’s website and the app itself make it seem like I should see content from my Threads timeline, though. (Perhaps I don’t because I turned off “fediverse sharing” with my Threads account a few weeks ago — because I prefer keeping these networks separate. But if that’s the problem, Openvibe doesn’t explain that I need to re-enable it.)

I really don’t see the point of mashing the tweets from two (or more!) different social networks into one unified timeline. To me it’s just confusing. I don’t love the current situation where three entirely separate, thriving social networks each merit some portion of my attention (not to mention that a fourth, X, still kinda does too). But when I use each of these platforms, I want to use a client that is dedicated to each platform. These platforms all have different features, to varying degrees, and they definitely have different vibes and cultural norms. Pretending that they all form one big (lowercase-m) meta platform doesn’t make that pretense cohesive. Mashing them all together in one timeline isn’t simpler. It sounds simpler but in practice it’s more cacophonous.

The idea that this might in any way appeal to “newcomers” is bananas to me. The concept of streaming multiple accounts from multiple networks into one timeline is by definition a bit advanced. In my experience, for very obvious reasons, casual social network users only use the first-party client. They’re confused even by the idea of using, say, an app named Ivory to access a social network called Mastodon. The idea of explaining to them why they might want to use an app named Openvibe to access Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads (and the weirdo blockchain network Nostr) is like trying to explain to your dog why they should stay out of the trash. There’s a market for third-party clients (or at least I hope there is), but that market is not made up of “newcomers”.

Also, Openvibe is not a good app. It doesn’t look great, the custom font is somewhat cartoon-y (which I find both unattractive and off-putting), there’s a lot of gray-on-white low-contrast iconography and text, and, worst of all, it seems to update your feeds periodically and when it does, it refreshes and scrolls the timeline while you’re looking at it. It’s like having a book turn the page automatically while you’re reading in the middle of a page. When you leave and come back to the app a few minutes later, the timeline needs to reload, which contributes to the app feeling pretty slow. The overall look, feel, and layout says “generic Twitter-style social network”.

I do use and very much see the point of Croissant, a multi-network app for cross-posting to Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky. Croissant isn’t a client for consuming content from those platforms; it’s just a tool for sending new posts to those platforms.

And I’d love it if Tapbots’s aforementioned Ivory added support for Bluesky accounts. But when I use Ivory (as when I used Tweetbot, for years, before it), I don’t see — and wouldn’t want to see — a single timeline from all configured accounts. I want to switch between multiple accounts, each with their own discrete timelines. Openvibe is in many ways the opposite of Ivory, starting right from its slogan: “All decentralised social networks, single timeline”.