First of all, I would like to mention the development team, who are doing an incredible job.

I would emphasise the ability to communicate seamlessly with different networks. Bluesky and Tumblr have already been mentioned. In addition, Friendica also communicates with the diaspora. A Fediverse network with around 700,000 users that they can't see with other Fedi projects.

My personal highlights

- import of RSS
- Groups (platform-independent discussion boards similar to Lemmy, Kbin or nodebb)
- Channel (user-defined timeline)
- Circles (to hold closed discussions with selected people)
- and the possibility to use many profiles under one account (for public, thematic or private use)
- relays (you may know them from Bluesky as feeds)
- the possibility to communicate with external people from Friendica via e-mail

Of course, the variety of possibilities makes the use much more complex than in other Fedi projects. In my experience, however, most new users get along very well with Friendica if they don't even know what the platform has to offer and don't overwhelm themselves ;)

The first of my two biggest favorite features of Friendica over the other fediverse options are the post/comments idiom, more of a Facebook-like UX, over the status streams, the Twitter-like UX. The second is how much more pervasively it integrates with federated networks in general. It isn't just the ActivityPub fediverse that Mastodon, PixelFed, PeerTube, etc. rides on. It is also the entire Diaspora federated network, RSS's, and even networks like Bluesky (albeit using the client API not the ATProto federation system). It basically makes Friendica the hub of my whole social media experience.

@_elena

I'm on nerdica.net friendica instance. i'm not too familiar with groups or channels. i also unable to vote in mastodon polls for some reason. I am using android app 'Fedilab' for my daily driver as i find the UI better UX, the boost/reshare is obvious on the app, in the web version, i don't know which icon is the boost/reshare and have to go through the icons to find it. Also, fedilab has built-in libre translation service for translating a toot into my language.

#Friendica #TheFutureIsFederated #Fediverse

@_elena https://peertube.stream/w/p/4K4MWYXMEYUtVDqKjjq4Uu I've made the only tutorial on friendica on the interwebs. I have yet to get around to making pt 3 out of 5 as most were reworked from my 2020 tutorial when it was a VERY different website, and channels are brand new. What I personally love about Frienidca is its literally all the best features of every single social media platform rolled into one. Myspace/FB/G+/twitter/Tumblr?/and now with channels IG and tiktock. I also love that its the one ring to rule them all in terms of interconnectedness. I'd never give it up for mastodon because it would require losing all my diaspora friends here. Once they fixed the image issue that plagued them for so long, I deleted my mastodon account, and there are a few video upload issues they are working on that make me hang onto my pixelfed account still.

I've been running a one-person instance since 2011, and I occasionally contribute code.

The plugin system has been mentioned, but that's just the technical outcome of a core cultural differentiator: Friendica forswears all purity tests. While others bicker about whether Threads or Bluesky is good enough for the Fediverse, Friendica just connects to them, as long as they're willing. In the past that included reviled platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and that only ended when they stopped connecting to us, not the other way round.

So if you're sick of the Fedidrama, Friendica is a refuge.

One thing not widely known that I wished got more attention: the Events support. It's currently limited because no-one can agree what the standard says. But Friendica's implementation seems more advanced than any others. Imagine instead of clicking "like", you click "attend", and 1. all your followers see that you're attending, 2. the event organiser's followers see the attendee count tick up, and 3. the event appears automatically in your phone's calendar, with an address and reminders. I hope other platforms take inspiration from this. It could end up being important, e.g. for bands.