(I suggest you reply to your note directly, I think it's a lot clearer)

>> Sumana Harihareswara:

“[...] are we using the phrase "GNU Social" interchangeably with "pump.io"? If I'm updating my jargon then I may as well know. [...]”

No, they're quite different platforms. GNU Social is basically µblogging, while Pump.io (this is what we're using here, for this conversation) doesn't have a length limitation, and allows HTML content, inline images, whatever (among many other things, like editing posts/comments).

identi.ca is one of many pump.io servers, so janedoe@microca.st can follow william@identi.ca and interact just as if they were using the same server. That's what federation is.

Hopefully in the nearish future, Pump.io, GNU Social (and maybe others) will be speaking the same "language", so you could follow people on GNU Social from here, and viceversa. But that's the future.

As for the "unreliability", I'd really recommend going beyond the web interface. Sometimes errors are not due to the service itself.

Then again, obviously money and paid admins would greatly help here ;)