Spotlight on Three Next-Gen Open‑Social Apps from FediForum 2025

A few weeks ago at the June FediForum 2025 virtual unconference, three innovative tools made waves: Bonfire Social, Channel.org, and Bounce. Each brings a fresh angle to the open social web – customized community building, curated cross-platform feeds, and seamless account migration. In this post, you'll get the full picture: what each does, why it matters, and how creators, developers, and admins can experiment with them.

The Fediverse has long balanced autonomy and fragmentation – but as adoption grows, so does the need for specialized tools that meet real-world needs. At FediForum, these three new apps showcased distinct strategies for enriching the decentralized landscape while retaining core values of openness, control, and interoperability .

Bonfire Social 1.0, officially released at FediForum, is a self-hosted, modular platform that allows communities to build their own tailored social spaces .

• Core purpose: Provides a toolkit – feeds, threaded discussions, multiple profiles, privacy “circles,” and more – bundled into customizable “flavors.”
• Featured perks:
  • Flavor presets like Bonfire Community and Open Science cater to specific uses.
  • Advanced feed-building tools let users filter by engagement, date, sources, and enable “boundaries” for who can read or reply.
  • Native support for ActivityPub means full federation with Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, etc.
• Why it matters: Think of it as "WordPress for the Fediverse" – enabling niche communities to self-govern and craft their own user experience.

Channel.org (from the UK based Newsmast Foundation) is a Mastodon-based service that empowers users to build and share curated “channels” drawing from hashtags, added contributors, RSS feeds, and even Bluesky accounts.

• Core purpose: Create thematic feeds – like newsletters or mini-communities – that others can follow.
• Featured perks:
  • Pulls content from multiple networks: Fediverse, Bluesky, RSS.
  • Built-in filters: keyword, NSFW, and hate speech shields to ensure clean, focused feeds.
• Why it matters: Tackles algorithm fatigue by giving users deliberate control over what they see – ideal for creators, journalists, educators, and community organizers.

Bounce, developed by A New Social and Bridgy Fed, makes migrating a Bluesky account to Mastodon seamless.

• Core purpose: Move your account – followers, followings, posts – between protocols (ATProto ↔ ActivityPub) while preserving social graph.
• Featured perks:
  • Uses ActivityPub’s Move activity plus AT Protocol interoperability to transfer data.
  • Keeps both followers and who you follow intact, easing platform switching.
• Why it matters: Lowering the barrier to migration underlines the Fediverse promise: true data portability and user control.

Comparison Table

• Bonfire Social: Perfect for grassroots groups, academic collaborations, fan clubs – anyone wanting deep customization and control.
• Channel.org: Ideal for content curators – podcasters, journalists, educators – who want to curate and publish thematic feeds across ecosystems.
• Bounce: A must-have for users feeling locked into Bluesky but yearning to join the Mastodon universe without losing their social ties.

These three tools signal a new phase in Fediverse evolution – one marked by modularity, curation, and portability.

Whether you're building, curating, or migrating, they offer a chance to experiment and help shape the future of the open social web. 🌐

If you want to hear more from me you can find me in the Fediverse at @gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de (Mastodon) or @gelbphoenix@gram.social (Pixelfed). For more posts like this subscribe to my new newsletter or support me by becoming a member.