Today I discovered the Fediverse Software Database, and it’s a bit disheartening to see how many platforms have so few users. What are some ways we could help promote these smaller or newer Fediverse projects and give them more visibility?
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A lot of smaller instances is actually better (in my opinion). Means that the cost of keeping them up will be consistent. And we dont actually need to be as popular as corp stuff. I like the small town vibes this whole scene fedi gives off. Theres probably a LOT of smaller < 10 user instances out there of people just wanting to do their thing.
Do they want more visibility?
To me the Fediverse is like email. Some instances want to grow to as many users as possible. Some are just some dude who has his own email server and uses it for himself.
And everything in between
But… There’s a difference between instances and platforms. These are platforms.
I mean, your point is still valid, these platforms might not really be interested in gathering more users, but it’s not a matter of having a small server you want to keep to yourself. People could host these platforms on their own server, after all.
How did you escape your locker, Davy? (ba-dum-bump)
I don’t know much about the software side, but I’d venture that (as with some instances) not all of them are necessarily trying to put much energy in to growing their userbases. That is, some might be set up to meet the needs of a smallish group, and might not be particularly interested in outsiders joining. That’s just speculation though, purely extrapolated from the fact that some have set up their instances across the “FV” for that kind of purpose.
In other cases, I take it that such services are only federating to a limited portion of the FV, and that may indeed be a problem worth fixing sooner rather than later. For example, the four biggest user-bases by software (M, misskey, nodeBB and sharkey) don’t seem to federate well, or at all, to the ‘Lemmy’ side of the FV. At least IME, and in terms of the network I’m on (PieFed).
True but keep in mind Fedidb and Fedimap are opt-in, you’re probably not seeing everything, especially small stuff
MAU numbers for Misskey are underreported as many instances report it wrongly as 0.
Mobilizon does not count its instances’ MAU. Gancio has got no user accounts - events are published there anonymously and there is only one ActivityPub account to follow, which relays everything from the instance.
One cannot go past hundreds, maybe few thousands MAU without a significant hype and mainstream attention.
Mastodon was the decentralised social network and main ex-Twitter alternative at the time. Misskey attracted Japanese artists from a specific theme , exiled by Twitter. Pixelfed benefitted with Instagram’s moderation drama and then with a Streisand effect. Its autor helped it with some marketing but this only helped with the migration wave, not caused it. Lemmy and /kbin grew on Reddit API debacle. PeerTube is one of self-hosting video solutions and a P2P video platform and a federated one. NodeBB and WordPress carried over their legacy user bases.
No other platform has more than several thousands MAU
Speaking of Kbin, how is it rn? My first account was made on there after all
