social.outsourcedmath.com
Danie
Danie • friendica (via Diaspora)

The many branches of the Fediverse and why Mastodon is only one of many other connected social networks


Bild/Foto
I also still see lots of confusion and questions from many new users flooding into Mastodon, and then wondering whether they must also have an account on Pixelfed, etc. The other issue is, that you can’t just use a handle on it’s own, as you must also identify which instance it belongs to, much like a street address is associated with a town it belongs in. The Fediverse is much bigger than just Mastodon, and you may only need one account in one place, to connect to everywhere else, and that account need not be on Mastodon, or even the one big original Mastodon server instance.

Fediverse is shorthand for federated universe. But what does federated really mean in this context? It’s important to remember that the vast majority of applications in the picture (in linked article) can be installed thousands of times over and each of these instances, or servers, be of many different sizes. Each of these have their own rules and ownership, and make up their own corner of the Fediverse.

It is good for all users of social networks to realise there is a bigger picture context, and to understand more about their options going into the Fediverse one day, if they so wish. Some good FAQ at the linked article below.

See https://axbom.com/fediverse/

#technology #fediverse #socialnetworks #mastodon
#Blog, ##fediverse, ##mastodon, ##socialnetworks, ##technology
#SocialNetworks #Mastodon #fediverse #Technology #blog
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Isaac Kuo
Isaac Kuo • diaspora
What are user numbers like, though? Last I tried to look into it, it seemed like Mastodon and diaspora had the largest user bases by far, with everything else combined very small compared to those two.

I mean, like ... I use SocialHome but I think the number of active users is in the dozens. Friendica and Hubzilla were in the hundreds, maybe?

I know that with Mastodon it's inflated because there are users with lots of different accounts on different pods, but surely it's not THAT much inflated.
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Danie
Danie • friendica
@Isaac Kuo yes Mastodon is by far the largest with a few million users of it's own. Problem is, the numbers have grown tremendously the last few days alone, and some reporting sites are still lagging for totals showing 22 Oct. Mastodon alone was showng about 700,000+ over just three or four days and some servers were going down and locked new registrations until they'd upgraded. PixelFed has also had a lot of growth.

Yes some do register across some instances, and of course many have been inactive accounts, but I suppose Twitter also has a lot of dormant accounts.

Diaspora is still going along, but they chose not to federate with the Fediverse as they don't want to use the ActivityPub protocol. They can though, federate with Friendica and Hubzilla servers.

Best stats are probably at https://the-federation.info/ showing 6,8 millions users across 11,695 nodes. Pity I don't see how to sort the projects by user count, but regardless it does show how far ahead Mastodon is. Thing is from Mastodon, you can follow most of those other networks anyway without leaving Mastodon.
@Isaac Kuo
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Danie
Danie • friendica (via ActivityPub)
Interesting the active user count does show exponential growth - from a flattish 587k to 1,5 million in a matter of days, but it needs another week or so to show whether that trend continues or just flattens out.
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Danie
Danie • friendica (via ActivityPub)
Active user count last 6 months
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Isaac Kuo
Isaac Kuo • diaspora
I'm not even talking about the last few days or even the last few months.

Say, 1 or 2 years ago, it was already the case that Mastodon and diaspora were the biggest by far, with far fewer users in everything else combined. This isn't the first time people mass migrated from Twitter to Mastodon. It has come in waves (smaller than this one, though, I'd guess).
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Will
Will • diaspora
I vaguely recall that mastodon was originally populated by a bunch of users abandoning reddit. A fair number of g+ people moved to twitter.

I suspect that Mastodon will get into the mainstream now. Twitter users will go where the big names go and I see signs they are moving to Mastodon. There are special servers for math, AI, journalism and others so the migration might be boosted as they find a way of rediscovering people. I expect some directory development will happen.

At any rate this is an interesting development to see twitter disrupted. No telling how it will settle out.
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Danie
Danie • friendica
@Will can't remember whether that was the founding reason for Mastodon as it is certainly closer to Twitter, whereas Lemmy was written to mimic Reddit more closely with the vote up/down buttons. But yes there have been waves of users leaving every few years because something happened. Google+ demise left millions also looking for a new home, and those users did not want to go back to Facebook etc.
@Will
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Will
Will • diaspora
The Axbom write-up is excellent. I can see things starting to come together. Online payments now are pretty easy so there may be a growing source of revenue other than advertisements. The open API's and protocol make it pretty easy to develop things like better UI's and apps, directories, and whatnot. And there are several other non-federated sites that might get some traction such as counter social, tribel, cohost, hey cafe, etc.

But back to the numbers. Most people are wedded to facebook apps and youtube, and tik tok. Even twitter is pretty small compared to those gorillas.
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Danie
Danie • friendica
@Will although of course Facebook has many ghost profiles that are not active. When I closed my mom's account down about a year back I was interested to see lots of our family there but seemed like only two had actually been posting anything the previous few months. The others were there in name only, or just following.

Thing is there is a home for everyone and they are quite different. Out of all my followers across 14+ networks there are only one or two handfuls that follow me across more than one network, as the user bases are quite different.

Advertisers will probably find a home on the new networks but they'd have to do it through paid sponsorships through influencers, as they can't just insert paid promotions into feeds. You have to follow a profile before seeing adverts.

Although I'm wondering if Mastodon introduces following hashtags soon, whether business accounts won't start using that. More features means more ways in, I suppose 😉
@Will
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Will
Will • diaspora
14 networks, wow. Interesting that you don't see much overlap. I would think that facebook, instagram, and whatsapp would have large overlap being in the same social network ecosystem.

I mentioned directory services being an important element in the rise of mastodon and other federated platforms. Looks like this twitter rebellion has stimulated a bunch of smart people to pull together ways to find one another. I think it's pretty clear that a seismic shift is going on with social networks.

https://researchbuzz.me/2022/11/05/a-big-list-of-mastodon-resources/

https://fediverse.info/explore/people

https://fediscience.org/server-list.html

https://fedi.directory

fediverse.info

The bespoke fediverse guide
fediverse.info
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Danie
Danie • friendica
@Will I should clarify, yes some overlap in terms of network functionality, but I meant my followers are often unique to each network. They choose the different networks clearly for each's own culture and reasons.
@Will
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