I don’t think anyone here is arguing that the entire world will be using pixelfed by the end of the year, and that its usage will expand to other galaxies by the end of the decade.
It’s a comment about the current growth curve, and it is both accurate and interesting.
Lemmy had the same jump in numbers during the Reddit Exodus. Mastodon had a huge boost when Elon bought Twitter.
Every spike has been a followed by a slide back to baseline in less than a couple of months. After you’ve seen it happen so many times, it is no longer interesting.
I don’t think that either Mastodon or Lemmy slid back anywhere near as far as back to baseline? Sure, usage went down, perhaps even significantly compared to the peaks, but I think that both retained a lot more users than they had before their respective spikes. I’m an example of someone who came into Mastodon with the Twitter exodus and into Lemmy with the Reddit exodus, and I’ve stayed for both.
I don’t mean that the numbers went exactly back where they were. I mean that every spike was followed by a steady decline.
Compare it with Bluesky now, or compare it with Reddit during Digg’s meltdown. Their growth curves will look like an S-curve, not this series of discrete jumps followed by 40-60% loss.
@[email protected] tbh we shouldn’t expect the adoption curve of any Fediverse software to be somewhat similar to the ones of centralised social networks, since Fediverse completely misses the commercial aspect that encourage key users to stay in the platform easing communities to stick to it as well. My guess is that without the action of commercial dynamics, the situation wouldn’t be so different from the jumps-and-losses moments we’re used to
ok, that’s a fair point. But then this whole talk about “going vertical” and “exponential growth” is useless, and the only thing that we could (perhaps) try to take out of these mass migration events is to ask ourselves “would we able to reduce churn in the Fediverse without compromising on any principles?”
In other worlds, does this mean that the only reason that the Fediverse is small is because it is not as addictive as the other social networks? Does this mean that leaving Instagram and coming to PixelFed is the same as quitting unhealthy ultraprocessed foods and realizing that when you switch to a healthy diet you simply don’t eat as much at all?
And if any of this is true, shouldn´t we change the effort from “leave Instagram and come to PixelFed” to “Leave Instagram and quit all social media”?
The fact that you believe these platforms were the same before and after these events makes it sound like you were not, in fact, there to see it happen. In my experience, it permanently changed both platforms, transforming them from weird niche sites to genuine alternatives.
That said, what you find interesting or not is not any of my business.
Yeah, I know I shouldn’t bother. I am just annoyed by the misconception that all graphs should always start in 0 on the Y axis, as if it was some law of nature. Shouldn’t allow myself to get dragged in further. :)
I am here since before the Reddit backout and I am on Mastodon since 2018. Lemmy was at 15k MAU, went up to over 125k and now is 1/3 of that. Mastodon had 1M 575k something before Elon, hit up close to 2M 1.5M and now is sitting around 800k. (edit: I was looking at the overall charts and used wrong figures. Corrected now.)
Sure, if your reference point is waaaay before the spikes then what we have now seem “a lot”. However, my point is that these spikes are far from being indicative of mass adoption.
I’m sorry, I think I was looking at overall numbers and not just Mastodon. According to https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/stats&months=48, it seems Mastodon was at ~575k MAU before Musk, shot up to ~1.5M early 2023 and is now sitting around 800k.
https://xkcd.com/605/
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that the entire world will be using pixelfed by the end of the year, and that its usage will expand to other galaxies by the end of the decade.
It’s a comment about the current growth curve, and it is both accurate and interesting.
Lemmy had the same jump in numbers during the Reddit Exodus. Mastodon had a huge boost when Elon bought Twitter.
Every spike has been a followed by a slide back to baseline in less than a couple of months. After you’ve seen it happen so many times, it is no longer interesting.
I don’t think that either Mastodon or Lemmy slid back anywhere near as far as back to baseline? Sure, usage went down, perhaps even significantly compared to the peaks, but I think that both retained a lot more users than they had before their respective spikes. I’m an example of someone who came into Mastodon with the Twitter exodus and into Lemmy with the Reddit exodus, and I’ve stayed for both.
I don’t mean that the numbers went exactly back where they were. I mean that every spike was followed by a steady decline.
Compare it with Bluesky now, or compare it with Reddit during Digg’s meltdown. Their growth curves will look like an S-curve, not this series of discrete jumps followed by 40-60% loss.
@[email protected] tbh we shouldn’t expect the adoption curve of any Fediverse software to be somewhat similar to the ones of centralised social networks, since Fediverse completely misses the commercial aspect that encourage key users to stay in the platform easing communities to stick to it as well. My guess is that without the action of commercial dynamics, the situation wouldn’t be so different from the jumps-and-losses moments we’re used to
ok, that’s a fair point. But then this whole talk about “going vertical” and “exponential growth” is useless, and the only thing that we could (perhaps) try to take out of these mass migration events is to ask ourselves “would we able to reduce churn in the Fediverse without compromising on any principles?”
In other worlds, does this mean that the only reason that the Fediverse is small is because it is not as addictive as the other social networks? Does this mean that leaving Instagram and coming to PixelFed is the same as quitting unhealthy ultraprocessed foods and realizing that when you switch to a healthy diet you simply don’t eat as much at all?
And if any of this is true, shouldn´t we change the effort from “leave Instagram and come to PixelFed” to “Leave Instagram and quit all social media”?
Got it, thanks.
The fact that you believe these platforms were the same before and after these events makes it sound like you were not, in fact, there to see it happen. In my experience, it permanently changed both platforms, transforming them from weird niche sites to genuine alternatives.
That said, what you find interesting or not is not any of my business.
This thread (and others in that post) might interest you: https://communick.news/post/2320430/4138857
https://archive.ph/YtA25
Yeah, I know I shouldn’t bother. I am just annoyed by the misconception that all graphs should always start in 0 on the Y axis, as if it was some law of nature. Shouldn’t allow myself to get dragged in further. :)
Good mindset :)
I am here since before the Reddit backout and I am on Mastodon since 2018. Lemmy was at 15k MAU, went up to over 125k and now is 1/3 of that. Mastodon had
1M575k something before Elon, hit up close to2M1.5M and now is sitting around 800k. (edit: I was looking at the overall charts and used wrong figures. Corrected now.)Sure, if your reference point is waaaay before the spikes then what we have now seem “a lot”. However, my point is that these spikes are far from being indicative of mass adoption.
So it increased by 200%
Oh, wow, very impressive! Did you have to use a calculator to get to this challenging result?
Communick’s revenue grew 1800% in 2024, compared to 2023. Do you think that makes it successful in any way?
Successful or not, it isn’t back to baseline
Again: “back to baseline” is not meant in absolute numbers, but trend-wise.
That’s unnecessarily agressive
This stat is really surprising. Do you by any chance have a link where I can see this data?
I’m sorry, I think I was looking at overall numbers and not just Mastodon. According to https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/stats&months=48, it seems Mastodon was at ~575k MAU before Musk, shot up to ~1.5M early 2023 and is now sitting around 800k.
No worries, thanks for the link to the data, I appreciate it!
Cool. You… don’t have to engage in discussions that bore you. Why waste your time?