Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, has announced that the ActivityPub feature is now available in all WordPress plans on WordPress.com.
This means that anyone using a hosted version of WordPress.com can now connect to decentralized social networks and link their blog to these platforms like Mastodon.
Earlier this year, Automattic acquired a plugin that allows tracking of WordPress blogs on the decentralized social network.
Later, version 1.0.0 of the plugin was released, allowing WordPress blogs to be tracked via Mastodon and other decentralized applications, although WordPress.com blogs were not supported at the time.
Blog owners can use this plugin to get more followers, share posts on other platforms, and receive responses from those platforms that are converted into blog comments.
As Automattic points out, this can create interactive and dynamic conversations around content. Blogs themselves can also use the plugin to create DCN user accounts instead of having to create one directly with DCN. This gives them access to a large audience, including 1.8 million monthly active users within the Mastodon platform and 13.3 million users overall. Via DCN.
The ActivityPub protocol enables social networks to communicate across platforms, allowing users to view and interact with content from other platforms from their site without having to create a new account.
The Automattic-owned ActivityPub plugin currently has 54,756 installs, compared to 42,831 last month.
Configured at free, personal, and premium levels for WordPress sites, millions of bloggers can now join the decentralized social network.
WordPress will officially support the ActivityPub protocol as the social network looks to compete with X and many users are considering moving to other social platforms.
X-Alternatives has seen significant user growth at times, and so far each platform has its own appeal and competition, such as Mastodon, BlueSky, and Threads.