Chris Trottier

Here’s the big picture as far as Fediverse MAUs are concerned.

This chart shows the past 24 months. It’s not entirely accurate because it’s not displaying the current month correctly. However, it’s the general ballpark.

Now I want to make something clear. This chart does not consider Threads – and that’s probably a good thing since Fediverse integration is not 100%.

Having said that, the Fediverse’s high point was in July 2023 when it hit 2.3M MAUs. From there, it fell. Why is this? Four reasons:

  • Bluesky and Threads were growing at the expense of the Fediverse
  • Big Social didn’t do much to piss off users
  • Progressives thought Biden or Harris would win the Presidency
  • No big releases happened on the Fediverse

    • Contrast this with now. Bluesky and Threads are still growing, but people are becoming more cynical about them. Big Social, specifically Meta and X, are pissing off users quite a bit. Trump won the Presidency. There were more big releases of Fediverse software this month than the entirety of 2024.

    Now current MAUs of 1.2M is nothing compared to July 2023. However, it’s certainly more than 869K during October 2024.

    Remember when I said that growth of the Fediverse is asynchronous, and largely depends on dissatisfaction with Big Social? Here it happened again.

    If we don’t want this ongoing hamster wheel of asynchronicity – depending on dissatisfaction of Big Social to grow the Fediverse – someone needs to make a completely innovative and novel social media concept for the Fediverse. That is, one that is not a clone of an existing service.

    https://fediverse.observer/stats

    Fediverse Observer checks all sites in the fediverse and gives you an easy way to find a home from a map or list or automatically.

    Fediverse Sites Status. Find a Fediverse server to sign up for, find one close to you!

    Jan 21, 2025 at 4:23amWeb
    Show threadSLSJan 21, 2025

    @atomicpoet

    I agree so much

    The fediverse should be the center hub for #antifacists it's built that way but people only want Big Social clones

    There's an ill planned strike against the #MetaDemon going on - the marginalized who rely on community care are suffering, we've been suffering since the election too

    I don't have the words but this is more important than simply where people go for news or "fun"

    Show threadNow at @[email protected]Jan 21, 2025

    @atomicpoet Interesting insights, although I'm not sure I fully agree on that last point.

    I agree the Fedi needs new and better platforms.

    But it *also* needs really great versions of platforms that already exist.

    As close to the existing platform's UI as possible, with good onboarding.

    As in, you can put the Fedi-Facebook and he'll know how to use it, because everything looks the same, is called the same thing, works the same way, and is in the same place.

    Why BlueSky has managed to notch up 20 million users is simply because it's done a really good job of looking and working like Twitter, circa 2018 or so.

    The character limit's the same, quote tweets are the same, the UI is the same, it's well polished on both the web and mobile.

    When you sign up, you're on the main instance. You're not given a screen of 50 possible PDS hosts or custom feeds.

    And the starter packs are a great touch for on-boarding.

    There's an argument in that for a Mastodon fork that's as Twitter-like as possible.

    From there, people will over time branch out to the Akkomas and the Friendicas and the Hubzillas.

    And on the Fedi, a rising tide raises all ships. More people using clone apps mean more people to interact with on unique apps.

    Show threadChris TrottierJan 21, 2025
    @ajsadauskas That onboarding process you would like can’t happen because there is no scale to allow everyone to arrive on one server.

    On November 2022, Mastodon wasn’t referring people to other servers merely to decentralize but because mastodon.social could not handle the rush of registrations.

    Same deal now with Pixelfed. The main server, pixelfed.social, can’t handle the demand for registrations. Therefore other servers must pick up the slack.

    The reason Bluesky can handle 20M accounts is because of VC money. They got millions of dollars to make it happen. Whereas Pixelfed barely has over $1,000/month.
    pixelfed

    The original Pixelfed instance, operated by the main developer @dansup

    pixelfed
    Show threadNow at @[email protected]Jan 21, 2025

    @atomicpoet Good points on the need to spread the load around.

    That said, I know of several people who were going to sign up to Mastodon, but were put off when they were told to choose a server.

    Likewise, on BlueSky recently I spoke to someone who was having second thoughts about making a @pixelfed account because of the list of servers. (I suggested to her to just sign up directly at pixelfed.social, and she did.)

    Surely there's a better way to manage onboarding? Perhaps ask people their country and language (and even state for the US) and assign them to a different default server based on their answer?

    Anyway.

    My main point is that having Fediverse apps *both* that closely resemble a big social service, *and* new novel concepts, is beneficial.

    So perhaps a fork of Mastodon that looks as much like old Twitter and BlueSky as possible, and also another fork that adds its own new features?

    Perhaps some other new Fedi apps that closely resemble Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

    At the same time, I have a few ideas around what some new Fedi platforms could potentially look like...