Dominance is defined as being the recommended industry standard or de facto standard---a majority of users.
If ambiguous (e.g., no clear dominant protocol due to difficulty counting true users), this will resolve to N/A.
Even if a centralized platform is still dominant (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), this will resolve to the most widely used decentralized protocol/industry standard.
Protocol: A system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information
A social media protocol needs to:
1. support sharing of content by users;
2. support interaction with the content of other users;
3. have permanence/persistency.
Counterexamples:
RSS---no interaction.
IRC and Matrix---not designed for async access with persistence.
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I'm fairly sure matrix could count (afaik async access is easy, it's not missing anything there), but I'd rule it out because it just isn't being used for social media stuff and probably never will be.
I'm not sure how I'd define social media stuff. One to many broadcasting? Do Telegram Channels count then?
@xyz maybe a good analogy would be the slightly different sets of HTML tags recognized by different browsers. Everybody recognizes these standards as just "html". So I'd say: if that's the kind of iteration on ActivityPub we see, then sure this should still resolve to ActivityPub.
@xyz as outlined here, this would be ActivityPub https://gizmodo.com/instagram-twitter-clone-threads-app-meta-facebook-1850522485
(Sounds like this news should lead to updates in the direction of ActivityPub)
Betting on ActivityPub because lots of applications that use other protocols seem to be bridging to it right now, e.g. Hubzilla, Nostr etc. which will allow its use to grow alongside these other protocols. AP seems to be the gold standard right now and even if your new protocol is simpler: if you're joining in the fediverse you're probably also using ActivityPub
@Odoacre rather than an application (twitter, facebook etc.) a protocol is a thing that applications can be built on that lets them talk to each other. Examples are ActivityPub which Mastodon, Calckey, Akkoma, etc. run off, AT which BlueSky uses, Zot which powers HubZilla, etc.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
@Odoacre that's a good point! I had assumed messengers did not count but they can fit under some definitions of social media. I suspect @JGY is the only one who can give a solid answer to that
@Xe Yes. I agree with your characterization of a protocol.
I think that reasonable requirements for a social media protocol, are:
1. support sharing of content by users;
2. support interactions with the content of other users;
3. permanence/persistency.
RSS is not a social media protocol---no interactions.
IRC and Matrix are not social media protocols---they are not designed for async access with persistency.
The above definition seems broadly consistent with how people have been answering the question so far---basically listing Twitter and Reddit "clones."
@maciek Why so confident? Nostr seems to be much more obscure (and less user-friendly) compared to the other alternatives as of the time of commenting.
@duck_master Nostr has, by far, the best architecture. It is the simplest communication protocol out there. I think it's likely to become a base layer protocol (like TCP/IP or Bitcoin).
@maciek Thing about them being protocols means that people will find ways to connect them when possible. Apparently there's at least one bridge between ActivityPub and Nostr now: https://soapbox.pub/blog/mostr-fediverse-nostr-bridge/
If people can do social media interactions with Nostr users from elsewhere then it doesn't get as much of a "network effect" over other connected networks—so even while it has what technical superiority it has, there might be less incentive to switch if the alternatives are better (or better marketed) in enough other respects.
@Sinclair Wow. I had no idea that there were still people around using Steemit (or whatever it's called now).