Relative size comparison of social media platforms (December 2023)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473
Compared against the predominant incumbent social media platforms, the fediverse is very small.
information sources:
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I'm surprised that the fediverse is as popular as it is, I would've guessed <500k. That's awesome. I'm also shocked that Threads is apparently that popular, I completely forgot it existed immediately after it launched. I also didn't know that Snapchat still existed, so maybe I'm just out of touch on social media stuff.
Facebook forgot it existed too, they just recently made it possible to delete threads accounts without deleting Instagram
Meta realized the same thing we all realized when we came here: userbase entrenchment is significantly more difficult to overcome nowadays than it was back in the 2000s when Facebook managed to pull everyone over from Myspace.
Legitimately, it seems like the average user nowadays is so hellbent against even a modicum of inconvenience or a slightly less populated environment that they will accept literally anything. The big tech and social media platforms couldn't shake off users if they tried anymore. They can do every every shitty, anti-user, anti-consumer thing under the sun and users will bitch about it, but never, ever try an alternative.
And that's why these companies and their devs don't listen to feedback anymore. Why bother?
This is just factually untrue with the numbers lemmy by itself has being having. Not to say anything of Mastodon and et al. There wouldn't be a mass exodus of highly engaged folks from reddit to lemmy if users just didn't move anymore. Threads got big but then instantly deflated to a much lower number immediately.
Active accounts on Lemmy instances is in the tens of thousands. I like it for the most part, but it's not really a significant part of the 1.5 million in the graphic.
Threads was built on top of Instagram infra (essentially Instagram but for text posts) so it's not surprising the two accounts were intertwined. Would have made it easy to roll out an MVP (minimum viable product) when there was a need for it, and quickly iterate on it after launch. The original launch didn't even include a web version as it wasn't finished yet.
I’d like to see the breakout in the Fediverse for Mastodon vs. all others.
Thales was kind enough to provide a link:
What is a misskey?
Japanese fedi server
cooler mastodon
Peertube is bigger than I thought!
I'm surpsied Kbin is so low.
The project still lacks an API meaning there’s no mobile apps, so I imagine that hinders adoption.
I’m actually not, I was really excited for Kbin during the migration and just got on .world until it was more fleshed out. But 6 months later I think it missed the first boat out of Reddit and may not catch on now
Thanks!
Mastodon is by the biggest contributor to Fediverse as a whole. Has been adopted by tons of Orgs like EU, W3C, Verge, Flipboard, etc.
The fact that I regularly recognize my fellow Lemmings by username makes it feel small, but its not too hard to find a community full of strangers either.
I'm just curious what you thought might have happened to Snapchat? What app took its place in your estimation?
I think I got Snapchat and Vine mixed up or combined in my head. I've never used either one, I thought it shut down years ago, but what I'm remembering is Vine shutting down.
Vine was basically TikTok with shorter videos. I feel like it was a bit ahead of its time - phone cameras weren't as good when it launched, and a lot of people didn't have enough data to watch a feed full of videos.
Didn't FB use some shady practice to make their users fall into Threads without noticing?
I think this was a misunderstanding of a bit of shitty functionality in threads. If you had Instagram and made a linked threads account, you would see follow suggestions for people who hadn't made an account yet. It was basically "if this person makes a threads account I want to be following them". I don't believe it meant those suggested people had a shadow account or anything like that though. Still sketchy and probably drove inorganic growth, but I believe the number of users is counting the number of people opting into opening an account.
It's just naturally going to be incredibly high, because so many people use Instagram and would've been exposed.
The Fediverse is going to get a lot bigger once Meta turns on federation for Threads.
Or it'll kill it!
RIP XMPP
How? XMPP still works anyway.
Oh yeah it works so I guess by that metric it's not dead
Of course, silly me
i use it. conversations is a p good android app and it's in the f-droid repo. disroot runs an xmpp service and if you're cool, they'll give you an account.
Well, what do you really mean?
I'm not the person you asked, but I've heard an argument that goes like this: Evil Company will "embrace" something, then "extend" it in a way that only works with Evil Company's product, then "extinguish" that thing by making Evil Company's approach incompatible with it. A discussion is provided here: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Yeah, but I don't know if that really applies to XMPP. Google turned on XMPP federation for seven years and then turned it off. The article basically admits that it's counterfactual to say that XMPP would have wider adoption or be more developed today if Google never did that.
I think a more significant concern would be if Meta hires away Fediverse developers, but that is separate from them just turning on federation.
