Former WordPress Employee Is Trying To Recreate Tumblr In The Fediverse (Goblin)

Kaijali, Goblin leader from Overlord

Image Credit: Kaijali, Goblin leader from Overlord, picture from Overlord Wiki.

So Javi Alvarez, an employee who use to work for Automattic (the company behind WordPress, Tumblr & WordPress.com) is attempting to build a Tumblr like application for the Fediverse with an interesting name.

Hi! I'm @jv@mastodon.social and https://tumblr.com/jv, but this is my little instance where I'm doing a bit of an experiment to merge both. Basically, I'm trying to build a tumblr-like platform that runs on the fediverse. I called it Goblin, and you can find the source code here:

https://github.com/johnHackworth/goblin

Goblin.band is my own instance, with me being the only account right now while I'm working on it. If you are interested to try it, let me know and I can ping you when I'm ready to let other folks in to test. (via @javi@goblin.band bio)

Update: Javi’s handle is displayed incorrectly in WriteFreely due to the underscores (which makes it appear italicized), so I linked it to his profile on Mastodon instead (link should work).

Usually when one thinks of the word Goblin, negative connotations appear in the brain, although maybe Javi's idea of Goblin is closer to what is seen from the anime Overlord.

Goblin is currently based upon Firefish, an ActivityPub platform which was forked from Misskey by @kainoa@firefish.social (see side note below).

Side note: There have been unconfirmed reports that Kainoa has abandoned the Firefish project, although his last post was a month ago so he could merely be busy with life, especially after the holidays.

Goblin seems to be another fork of Firefish, with the other prominent ones being Iceshrimp by @zotan@estrogen.network, & Catodon by @panos@catodon.social & @namekuji@its.waah.day (Catodon features a cute pirate cat icon for what it's worth! πŸ˜‚).

However, what will separate Goblin apart from the various Fediverse forks of Misskey (or Firefish), is the fact that Goblin seeks to build integration with Tumblr, which (to my understanding) will allow users to post to their Tumblr blogs from Goblin.

Currently two other platforms also post to Tumblr (Micro.Blog by @manton@manton.org & WordPress via the JetPack plugin), but I believe what Javi is trying to do is recreate Tumblr's fun albeit awkward culture upon the Fediverse, since it is unclear when Tumblr will activate ActivityPub on their site.

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