It is an instagram knockoff. I think they are avoiding the fediverse mention on purpose in order to get users by just marketing it as an alternative without any special magic. This about page as a landing page is really confusing but the homepage doesn't do much better... Also registration is closed so this is a really strange time to be advertising
The author posts regular updates on Mastodon that I follow. From my understanding, federation is relatively new, and he seems to focus on expanding the functionalities of the core product right now instead of focusing on the presentation.
So indeed, it is a bit of an awkward time for it to be on the front page here.
The federation side of it is pretty new and Dan wants to have the core product sorted, including security testing before federation is really pushed. There's a new post UI coming soon that looks really good.
