If you're asking for the difference with Mastodon:
Mastodon is a piece of software that can be used to run microblogging servers that connect to the fediverse. The collective of servers that run Mastodon can also be called Mastodon.
"Fediverse" refers to the federated social network and all servers and users in it, regardless of whether they use Mastodon. For example, I'm commenting from Friendica, a more Facebook-like platform.
I guess an explanation could be... "other things that aren't Mastodon but can talk to it"
Like email for example, you can an account on different providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Protonmail... ), and then even access them over the web, or a mobile app, or even desktop applications... but anyone can send and receive to/from everyone else.
Here's a graphic detailing all the different kinds of applications there are:
F00FC7C8 likes to infodump
•Mastodon is a piece of software that can be used to run microblogging servers that connect to the fediverse. The collective of servers that run Mastodon can also be called Mastodon.
"Fediverse" refers to the federated social network and all servers and users in it, regardless of whether they use Mastodon. For example, I'm commenting from Friendica, a more Facebook-like platform.
jec&
Like email for example, you can an account on different providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Protonmail... ), and then even access them over the web, or a mobile app, or even desktop applications... but anyone can send and receive to/from everyone else.
Here's a graphic detailing all the different kinds of applications there are: