My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions
Tim's 2026 predictions are worth paying attention to - and form a great map for following where the open social web is going.
Dewey Digital founder Tim Chambers has spent a lot of time studying and digging into the open social web, including by creating the Twitter Migration Report. So his predictions are well-informed and worth paying attention to.
He’s split them up into safe, plausible, and risky bets. Each category checks out and makes sense. We’ll be able to follow along: Tim creates a scorecard at the end of the year (he just published the one for his 2025 predictions). But I think a lot of these are pretty bankable.
For example, I strongly agree with this:
“Fedify will power the federation layer for at least one mid-sized social platform (500K+ users) that adds ActivityPub support in 2026. The “build vs. buy” calculation for federation shifts decisively toward “just use Fedify.””
And while this one is in the “risky” category, I still have high hopes that it will happen. (I previously would have put it in the safe category, but now agree with the placement; things change.)
“A well-known digital-native media publication (10M+ monthly visitors) will federate via ActivityPub in 2026 and publicly share positive results. Whether through Ghost, WordPress, or custom implementation, this outlet will report that federated followers drove meaningful engagement — making the business case for federation legible to other publishers for the first time. By year end, at least two additional publications will announce federation plans, citing this pioneer as proof of concept.”
I appreciate the scrutiny and detail: if nothing else, this is a pretty great map of where to look for emerging development on the open social web. I’m excited to see where the movement goes over the next year.
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