9 million Mastodon accounts is extremely likely this month.

According to my math, an average of 1,115 new accounts per hour over the next 10 days would be needed to reach this milestone.

During the last hour, 1,780 new Mastodon accounts were made.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that the 8 millionth Mastodon account was made.

And already, we have 8,713,949 accounts.

This is incredibly fast growth.

It's also entirely feasible that by Dec 2023, there will be 20 million Mastodon accounts.

Consider this: you'd need 1,344 new account registrations per hour to achieve this milestone.

For the past 3 months, we've exceeded this average.

Mastodon doesn't actually represent the actual size of the Fediverse.

There's ~20,000 nodes on the Fediverse. Mastodon instances are about 12,000 nodes.

That means 8,000 nodes are NOT running Mastodon.

This means that it's entirely possible for the Fediverse to already exceed 10 million accounts.

One further food for thought: once Tumblr and Flickr join the Fediverse, the full network effect of the Fediverse will surpass Twitter.

Tumblr: 472 million accounts
Flickr: 65 million accounts

And wait -- the potential network effect gets spicier!

Are you sitting down? Here goes!

44% of all websites that exist right now run on WordPress.

Right now, connecting a WordPress site to the Fediverse is just a matter of installing this plug-in.

If just a fraction of WordPress sites connect to ActivityPub, then the network effect of the Fediverse will eclipse Big Social.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

ActivityPub

The ActivityPub protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol based upon the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format.

WordPress.org
@atomicpoet Can you explain what the benefit of installing this plugin would be? I'm pretty new to Mastodon, but do a have a blog on my website. Would this plugin push my blog posts into followers' Mastodon timeline, for example?
@weheartgames @atomicpoet That’s exactly what the description says it does.
@davidmcooper @atomicpoet Oh sheesh I'm looking right at it. Sorry!

@weheartgames

I think the most amazing thing is it's not just Mastodon instances and WordPress websites that can benefit from such reach, but the entirety of others as well.

@weheartgames
I think it also allows people to comment on your posts.
@atomicpoet

@weheartgames @atomicpoet

Thank you for asking, so I learn πŸ™‚

@weheartgames
Yup, that's exactly what it does!
For example, my blog is @admin. You can follow it like any other Fedi account, and people can read the posts and reply right in their usual Mastodon client.
(I play with the settings quite a lot so it might be slightly broken at any given time, but that's a me problem, not a WordPress or ActivityPub thing :p).
@silvermoon82 @weheartgames @admin
Is the fact that I can't see any of the posts because of the Mastodon client I'm using?
@weheartgames @atomicpoet yep! Any activitypub client, like Mastodon, can follow your Wordpress blog, and posts would appear in their feed just like any other activitypub post.

@weheartgames @atomicpoet I got around to installing it on one of my WP sites earlier this evening.

Firstly, your WP blog gets a separate account. It's a Fediverse micro-instance, not related to Mastodon.

So mine's not bidirectional as it's really not that kind of website (It's a recipe blog), but you can allow comments if you like.

What I get is someone could follow my WP and maybe turn on post notifications if they're really interested in that

@olavf Do you know if the WP site has to be a business level? Or is it available on personal? Not a huge deal. Just trying to think through some options.

@JulieNye I use it on a personal level ~ if you can install plugins, you can use it.

What you get is a Federated address @user@website (for example @olav )
and a profile link like [website]/author/[user]

Some notes: my config/theme doesn't seem to do profiles correctly, and I need to set up Gravatar to get a profile pic

@olavf @olav Thank you. Useful info. I'm debating what to do about 2 or 3 "situations." Too much detail to get into and not important enough for here. But was trying to figure out how this would apply to accts not yet opened and which levels they'd have to be. πŸ˜΅β€πŸ’«
@JulieNye I know that one lol.

@weheartgames @atomicpoet yes, Mastodon users could follow your blog.

Depends on the clients people use how it actually shows up I believe, Mastodon posts are `Note`s and blog posts should be `Article`s so they'll be differentiable

@weheartgames @atomicpoet I’d also be interested to get the answer to this.
And also to know what options there are for those of us on Wordpress.com hosted blogs, without the ability to use plugins.

@rabbigabriel There have been several answers; not sure if you can see the replies to my "question post"... I never know on here what people can and cannot see, based on who they are connected to, etc.

I think if you're on wp.com you'd have to wait until the core team added this functionality. But I am not any kind of authority on this stuff. πŸ˜…

@weheartgames @atomicpoet It works pretty well at pushing content out in to the Fediverse, but not so well (if at all) for pulling it FROM the Fediverse.
So, people can follow your blog, and comment on it, but you can't follow them, or even see their content.
You can respond to comments they make on your blog, but that is about it, unfortunately.
I'm hoping that after Tumblr becomes part of the Fediverse, they turn their attention to WP, which they also own.
@stuartb Ok thanks for the reply. I wonder how it works if I have comments turned off on my blog. If someone replies to a blog post on Mastodon, where does their reply go, for example.
@weheartgames
That I have no idea about, sorry - I would assume that if comments are turned off then they wouldn't be able to even try, but it's not something I've ever tried.
@weheartgames @atomicpoet the benefit Is that anybody else on the fediverse using a piece of software that also supports activitypub can follow your blog just as they follow your mastodon account. And your blog posts would show up in their feed. Almost like an interactive RSS feed I suppose?

@weheartgames
> Would this plugin push my blog posts into followers' Mastodon timeline

Yes. See:

https://futurist.info/@jimcarroll/109548077730120299

@atomicpoet

Futurist Jim Carroll (@jimcarroll@futurist.info)

Attached: 1 image @atomicpoet@mastodon.social Ok. Installed it. I show up in a search. I only post 1 or 2 blog posts a day but it will be interesting to see how it flows out.

Mastodon