Distributed social network

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A distributed social network (more recently referred to as a federated social network) is a network wherein all participating social networking services can communicate with each other through a unified communication protocol. Users that reside on a compatible service can interact with any user from any compatible service without having to log on to the origin's website. From a societal perspective, one may compare this concept to that of social media being a public utility. Federated social networks contrast with social network aggregation services, which are used to manage accounts and activities across multiple discrete social networks that cannot communicate with each other. A popular example for a federated social network is the fediverse, with more niche examples such as IndieWeb complementing the network.

Services that want to natively connect into a federated social network need to be interoperable with both the majority of content that the network produces (either through converting the content into the service's native format or by adding the ability to read the content in its intended presentation) and the common protocol that the services use. The protocols that are used for federated social networking are generally portable and independent of a service's architecture so it can be easily adopted across various services without requiring a refactoring of its design to accommodate the network, although platforms that do incorporate support for a federated network typically do so to improve the user experience and make the network's effects more clear for users.

A few social networking service providers have used the term more broadly to describe provider-specific services that can be installed across different websites, typically through added widgets or plugins. Through the add-ons, the social network functionality is redirected to the users' social networking service.