Chris Trottier365,200 new Mastodon accounts this month!
To be specific:
* Dec 31, 2022: 8,957,764 accounts
* Jan 31, 2023: 9,322,049 accounts
Not as much growth as December, but this is still great growth!
To put January's growth in perspective, there was only ~300,000 active Mastodon users in September 2022.
So even if we pretended that October-December didn't happen, January 2023 would have *more* than doubled Mastodon's growth.
Twitter's hardcore users would like to believe otherwise, but people are still creating Mastodon accounts.
Big Social would like the Fediverse to go away.
It's not going away.
3rd party apps, like @[email protected], will grow Mastodon further.
And not just Mastodon, but the rest of the Fediverse too.
I recently tried Relatica, a Friendica app from @hankg -- it's coming along fine.
And @dansup will soon release the official @pixelfed app for both iOS and Android.
That's going to bring in a whole lot of new account registrations!
There's lots of opportunities for the Fediverse to grow further:
1. Return of Donald Trump to Twitter and Facebook
2. Increasing Elon Musk boondoggles
3. Banning of TikTok
4. Launch of several new Fediverse services
5. Tumblr, Flickr, Post integrating ActivityPub
I'm excited about the future!
Gen X-Wing@atomicpoet I bet a banning of tiktok will wildly help the VPN companies.
(Not taking a side per se. I don’t use TikTok and I find banning a *company* to be idiotic. Charge them with a crime if they committed one. Then do the same with any other company doing the same thing.)
Unattributed 👤 ☑@atomicpoet I've been surprised that the growth has slowed down (mostly) over the last few weeks.
I think it will take major events or issues for there to be substantial growth on Mastodon and the Fediverse again. It's likely to happen. But I suspect that Nos 1 & 2 on your list isn't likely to be too big (most of the folks that found those possibilities upsetting left already).
I doubt 3 is going to happen.
4 is likely, but won't bring on too many new people. 5 who knows if / when for that.
@atomicpoet IMO - it's going to take some other kind of event that will cause a mass-migration again... For example, I think if we see some governments opening their own instance(s) that will likely bring large groups into the Fediverse.
If something like YouTube, Instagram, Twitch or Discord causes a big stink, then we might see more migration to PeerTube, PixelFed, Matrix, etc.
Basically something really different from Twitter & Facebook. I don't think people will migrate easily.
@Unatributed The Fediverse doesn’t need another big mass migration. It just needs consistent growth coupled with further development of its tech.
In fact, one mass migration event is counterproductive for long term growth.
We need to build scale.
@atomicpoet I agree that building scale is more important.
I also think that there are a lot of issues that we need to address in order to mature into a network that can be more trusted. Things like addressing legal compliance in various regions / countries. Implementing better and flexible moderation tools.
I'd also like to see a system for distributed single profiles that can link your presence across multiple services... But that also enable privacy / control of the profile.
@Unatributed Legal compliance is not something that can be built within a day.
Regarding nomadic identity, that’s already being developed. In fact, Zot is already production ready. You can use it on Streams and Hubzilla.
@atomicpoet I haven't seen Zot yet... Wonder if it does what I am thinking. (It's not just nomadic identity that I am thinking about -- but the privacy part I think will be important).
As for legal compliance: nope, it's definitely not easy to build. But it's something that we should be thinking about, and see if we can start baselining the requirements to come up with a flexible solution.
Rufus J. Cooter@atomicpoet @Unatributed I think all of this is true; and also, I think that further mass migration events are inevitable, given the, ah, management challenges that Big Social looks like it's going to face for the foreseeable future...
But most of all, I think that the biggest advantage that the Fediverse has baked into the cake at this point is the steadily improving UI/UX, as a result of more devs offering more choices for how users interact with the 'verse. (As you've correctly noted!)
Steve Heller@atomicpoet I don't think that the rhetoric around Mastodon being "too hard is true", but I honestly do not understand how ActivityPub works. But I have made Mastodon my home for social connection now, and it feels so good, so cozy.
@hellerphant If you want to know how ActivityPub works, this is the best place to start: https://activitypub.rocks/
@atomicpoet awesome! Thanks so much. Will dive into this on the weekend.
Brian Wolf@atomicpoet Very excited for PixelFed to go live
Benj Soule🫂💙HumanityFirst🌅@atomicpoet @icecubesapp @hankg @dansup @pixelfed the Fediverse is a like a Linux/unix project that just needs a nice frontend to be shiny like Chrome. But not limited. Waiting to see what @Mozilla can do. #MastodonUpdate #FediverseUpdate
KBSez ✅@retrohondajunki @atomicpoet @icecubesapp @hankg @dansup @pixelfed
Fantastic conversation. Thanks to everyone participating!
Third party apps will drive wild innovation & growth. It’s what happened with Twitter and it’s what will happen here. All the best features of Twitter were not things the company created but were innovations users & developers came up with I expect the same thing here.