People are actually on BlueSky
There’s now a decent measurement of #bluesky user numbers (https://bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/bskycharts.edavis.dev/bsky_users_total.html) …
They’ve got about 1.6M MAUs …
& 0.8M Weekly unique users & 0.340M Daily.
That’s not nothing!
Roughly double mastodon and 60% more than the whole fediverse (by MAUs, see fedidb.org).
Bluesky is quite “international” with large Japanese and Brazilian popltns, and there’s real attrition happening IMO.
Still, let the protocol wars begin I suppose?
@maegul @fediverse I find BlueSky to be a lot more diverse and also far better for news than Mastodon. But at the same time it’s a nastier and more superficial place.
@Loukas @fediverse
Comparatively, it’s definitely a lot more into shitposting vibes, for sure.
I think their biggest problem right now is they don’t have good community self-organising features (nor masto, but the boost culture corrects for that IMO), so those who want more serious sub-cultures aren’t getting much footing (and may never).
Feeds are interesting but not very fruitful IMO and hashtags are new, so it’s a bit flat community-wise there, and many users are “wait & see” I suspect.
@maegul @fediverse The lack of community tools might be the biggest technical gap, but the real problem is a lack of communities who want to use either.
Because of this, I think both Mastodon and BlueSky have hit their highwater marks under current conditions and no technical changes can alter that.
A million each is enough to survive and stagnate but it doesn’t enable growth. Only some major antitrust action against Meta by EU could do that :)
@Loukas @fediverse
Agreed (and said the same myself)!
As I’ve said it … alternative social has run its course in this post-musk-twitter moment. Everyone’s settled down where they ended up.
And yea, either more major disruption or some new killer features (rather than clones of big social) will be needed to shake things up. Neither seem particularly likely in the short term … your EU-meta smackdown is probably the best bet??
@maegul @Loukas @fediverse
So none of you thinks the Threads / Activity Pub thing will have an impact?
My personal opinion is that its a strategic move to avoid regulation by being able to claim they are open.
#threads #activitypub
@mkarliner @maegul @fediverse We see a lot of actors using the same machinery as Mastodon, from Meta to Truth Social. I think it’s just because it’s easy for them to do so, and hence the marginal costs are low for them. Rather than it pointing to any strategic intent or meaning anything for the ‘Fediverse’. Although in that sense Mastodon has already had a phyrric victory in the protocol wars, because its enemies are using it.
@Loukas @maegul @fediverse
Why pyrrhic? Genuine question.
@mkarliner @maegul @fediverse because what we know as the Fediverse will not grow and may disappear, even as the tools it developed and proved could work become widespread and even dominant.
@Loukas @maegul @fediverse
I may be an optimist, but maybe adoption of AP will help reduce the worst of social media monopolies, and the “our” Fediverse culture is always going to be a minority taste, which is possibly OK.
The Fediverse will grow. Especially, with Threads joining and potentially Tumblr and Post.news. You’re right that the Fediverse we know will disappear. I believe there will and needs to be a great schism. You have strong actions of Lemmy and Mastodon that are anti Threads and anti growth, let’s call them small fedi. Then you have those that will federate with Threads and want the Open Social Web to become the major focus and how most people engage socially online, big fedi. You already have a culture with a lot of infighting and some fundamental incompatibilities, it will only get stronger. It’s best to separate now.