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I've heard this term recently to describe Google's new hangouts protocol, and Whisper System's new encrypted texting app.
The new TextSecure push transport is a federated protocol
What does that mean?
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federated adjective (STATES)consisting of a group of organizations, countries, regions, etc. that have joined together to form a larger organization or government: Brazil is a federated republic, with a civil law system. Federated systems guard against an overconcentration of power at the national level.
A federated network is a network model in which a number of separate networks or locations share resources (such as network services and gateways) via a central management framework that enforces consistent configuration and policies.
A federated model is a combined Building Information Model that has been compiled by amalgamating several different models into one (or importing one model into another).
Definition of Federated Security. Federated security allows for clean separation between the service a client is accessing and the associated authentication and authorization procedures. Federated security also enables collaboration across multiple systems, networks, and organizations in different trust realms.
I think it means a common, open protocol that allows lots of small networks to talk to one another without giving up control completely so they can still use a custom internal protocol. So SMTP and XMPP are federated protocols.
I couldn't find an exact definition anywhere but I do have evidence to support my statements:
Dictionary definition of the verb "to federate":
(with reference to a number of states or organizations) form or be formed into a single centralized unit, within which each state or organization keeps some internal autonomy.
A recent blog post by Open Whisper Systems that discusses federated vs centralized networks:
Indeed, cannibalizing a federated application-layer protocol into a centralized service is almost a sure recipe for a successful consumer product today. It's what Slack did with IRC, what Facebook did with email, and what WhatsApp has done with XMPP. In each case, the federated service is stuck in time, while the centralized service is able to iterate into the modern world and beyond.
This page refers to SMTP as a "federated email protocol":
Then, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) came along and allowed these systems to federate into one large email system.
(Aside: although I'm not from the US, I find it easiest to think of this term by analogy to the American "federal government": it allows all the US states to coordinate on a national level while still retaining a lot of internal control)
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