Web Village and the Open Social Web
The open social web is an alternative way to do social media that's now starting to scale -- social networking that is decentralized in nature and built on open protocols that any app or website can speak to. Instead of one company owning the whole network, thousands of independent servers — including your own website — connect to each other and share information. These include systems in the Fediverse (ie. Mastodon) or BlueSky (as part of the Atmosphere). Anyone, on a compatible app, can follow you, read you, and reply.
What does that mean in practice?
Web Village lets posts or blogs that you publish out to systems that are on the open social web. Further, users can follow your blog and write comments on it that will appear in your blog. You can see how people are responding. You are having a social media conversation right on your website. Also, it works in reverse. You can specify blogs or open social web accounts that you want to follow, to show the kinds of things you are interested in, and those posts appear where you want on your website.
Not happy with where you are? Take your data and your followers and easily move somewhere else.
Your social media should be your social media
Publish your content.
Your social media is published to the open social web.
When you publish a post, Web Village automatically shares it out to the open social web — your followers on Bluesky and in the Fediverse (Mastodon and the like) see it in their normal feed, right alongside everyone else they follow. No copy-pasting the same update into three apps, no scheduling tools, no reformatting.
Your domain is your identity. When people inquire about who you are, they go to your website.
Your site itself becomes something people can follow, like any other account. You post once, in your own space, and the networks carry it outward for you — while the real version, with your branding and your link, always lives at home on your site.
People can follow your site directly from whatever app they like, or subscribe by RSS. They connect to you, on your own domain — not to a platform that owns the relationship.
Receive comments
The conversation comes back to you.
When someone replies on Bluesky or in the Fediverse, it flows back and appears right under your post as a comment. One thread, gathered from across the networks, in one place you control.
And you stay in charge of it. Approve comments before they appear or let trusted conversations flow through automatically, and block anyone who isn't adding to the discussion. People join in with the accounts they already have — no new login, no sign-up on your site — so it's easy for them and owned by you.
Pull in Feeds
Bring the open social web onto your own site.
The open social web runs both ways. Your posts go out to it — and you can pull it back in. Almost everything out there publishes a simple feed: a blog, a Bluesky account, a Mastodon account. Web Village can read those feeds and show their latest posts right on your own site.
So you can gather the voices you care about — community partners, members, allied organizations, even your associated accounts — into one living stream on your site. It updates on its own, and it keeps people with you rather than sending them off to a dozen different apps. It's your own corner of the open social web, curated by you. For instance, B Local Ontario, keeps feeds of member B Corps in a single feed https://blocalontario.com/member-feeds, so people can see what B Corps in Ontario are up to.
Pulling it all together
Moving to a better way of doing social media
Put the pieces together and the whole picture emerges: your posts go out to the networks, the replies come back to you, and the wider web flows in — all of it running through the one place you actually own.
You're not posting into someone else's platform and hoping to be seen. You publish from home, let the open social web carry your work outward, and gather the response — and the conversation around it — back under your own roof. Networks come and go; your site, your audience, and your archive stay with you.
The way the social network was originally intended.
Technology should serve people, not platforms
Looking forward
The open social web is still young, so the foundation that is built now is going to continue to grow. Web Village is part of a network that is built on open foundations rather than one company's platform. Your site grows as the web does — new networks, new apps, new possibilities, with nothing to re-platform and no one able to lock you out. Wherever it goes next, your site comes with it, on your own terms.
You can already see where it's heading. Imagine joining a comment thread with the Bluesky or Mastodon account you already have, no new password to create. Imagine all of your content living as portable data you can pick up and take with you, not posts locked inside one database. Imagine new networks — including ones built closer to home — plugging in the same way Bluesky and the Fediverse do today. None of it asks you to start over; each is just one more doorway onto the same site you already own.
Not tied to one network. Today your posts reach Bluesky over the AT Protocol — an open standard, not one company's private pipe. That same foundation is built to reach further. As the ecosystem grows, we want your site to connect across different servers and the wider "ATmosphere" of apps being built on the protocol — so your audience is never locked to a single network or company. Your posts already live in an open, portable form; the aim is for more and more of the open social web to read and carry them, wherever people choose to gather.
Identity & private discussion
- Bluesky/AT Proto is moving in a direction, where your login can be used on different sites.
- Sign into your platform with a Bluesky/atproto account — and comment on your posts right on your site.
- Create private, permissioned discussion areas on your site so member‑only threads and private community conversation could run on the same open plumbing, not a walled silo.
More of the Open Social Web
- Work to integrate to other AT Proto networks (ie. Gander, Leaflet, Eurosky) — your posts reach them through the same machinery — new audiences, no re‑platforming.
- Per‑post, per‑network control — choose where each post goes, schedule it, and crosspost with other posts (events, announcements).
- Move to storing Web Village content as records on your own PDS (Personal Data Server - using the emerging shared publishing standard), so your writing is portable across the whole ecosystem
Richer Two‑way Engagement
- Expand on engagement from across the networks under your posts, and see your audience grow in one place with likes, reposts, and follower growth.
- Reply out from your own dashboard — respond into Bluesky/Mastodon threads from Web Village, so the conversation is fully two‑way from home.
- Mention & backlink discovery — surface "who linked, quoted, or replied to this" from across the network, right on your site.
Protocols and Networks
There are two main open networks today, and the easiest way to understand either is in three parts. The protocol is the shared language it speaks, the network is the crowd of independent sites and servers speaking it, and the app is what people open to read and post. Web Village works at the protocol level — which is how it connects your site straight into both.
Protocol: ActivityPub
Network: Fediverse
App: Mastodon
The Fediverse through ActivityPub was the original open social web. Instead of one company running everything, thousands of independent communities host it and link up with each other — so you can follow, and be followed, right across them. Mastodon is the app most people know it by, but it's just one of many doors in.
Protocol: AT Proto
Network: Atmosphere
App: Blue Sky
AT Proto, collectively called the ATmosphere, is built so your identity and your followers belong to you and can travel with you between apps. Bluesky is the app that put it on the map — familiar and easy to pick up if you’ve ever used Twitter. It is the newer, fast-growing side of the Open Social Web.