2026-07-09 –, Open Social Space
ActivityPub is the open W3C standard for social network interoperation. Published in 2018, ActivityPub is implemented by over 100 independent projects, ranging from geosocial checkin clients to Mastodon, Meta Threads, and WordPress. In this introductory talk, Evan will discuss the goals and architecture of ActivityPub, its related standards, and future developments for this fundamental social technology.
ActivityPub and its data format Activity Streams were standardized in 2018 by the W3C. Since then, it has been popularized by open source social platforms like Mastodon, Pixelfed and WordPress, as well as commercial platforms like Flipboard and Meta Threads.
In this talk, Evan will delve into the architecture of ActivityPub and its role in the social standards landscape. He will also address the upcoming revisions to ActivityPub, which promise easier implementation and clearer interoperability.
Evan is the Research Director at SWF. He is the co-author of the ActivityPub protocol and the Activity Streams 2.0 data format. Sometimes called “The Father of the Fediverse,” Evan made the first-ever post on the social web in May 2008. He founded the identi.ca website and GNU Social software, as well as coauthoring the OStatus specification. As chair of the W3C’s Social Web Working Group, he led the development of ActivityPub and AS2 into official standards. He won the O’Reilly Open Source Award in 2009 as “Best Social Networking Hacker.” He is the author of “ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web” from O’Reilly Media.