This is a big milestone for the folks at Automatic and the WordPress.com reader just became a great deal more connected and integrated to the open social web:
“The plugin’s ActivityPub API now powers its first real production client: the WordPress.com Reader. As a WordPress.com user, you can now read, follow, and post across the Fediverse through your WordPress blog, with every interaction tied to your blog’s own ActivityPub identity, and it all sits next to the rest of your Reader.
At the moment, this works for WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected sites (Jetpack may take a few more days to roll out fully), with self-hosted blogs coming next. Beyond that, the goal is to support any site that speaks the API. The Reader is the first client we’ve built on it, and what we learn here will also feed into the broader WordPress reading experience…. If your WordPress.com site has joined the Fediverse, it shows up in the Reader’s new Social section automatically, next to any Bluesky or Mastodon accounts you’ve connected.”