Submitted 2 days ago by Davy_Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com to fediverse@lemmy.world
I just came across 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?
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.
True but keep in mind Fedidb and Fedimap are opt-in, you’re probably not seeing everything, especially small stuff
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).
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
Kbin the software has died - technically there is still one small instance in Poland that uses it, but all others have ceased, and the software is no longer being maintained under that name - yet the project lives on in its fork Mbin.
Instances that include the kbin word - e.g. kbin.earth - only retain that now as a legacy.
Sadly I don’t think anyone has heard from Ernst, the original developer and admin of kbin.social.
App support finally came to Mbin though, see “Interstellar”.
A spiritual successor to Kbin’s design philosophy that is very much worth checking out is “PieFed”, which I am writing to you now using it :-). Most apps that work with Lemmy also now work with it (except Thunder support still coming “soon(TM)” but available only in the beta version for now, not the Play Store one). PieFed is written in Python rather than the obscure Rust language so its pace of development has been extremely rapid in comparison to Lemmy and it now has a feature set well beyond that of either Lemmy or Mbin. If you want to access both the Threadiverse/Lemmy/Mbin communities/magazines as well as Fediverse/Mastodon-style content, Mbin is still your best bet as it was designed for exactly that, but for Threadiverse stuff it offers numerous advantages. Anyway it is so nice to have choices to pick from!:-)
mesamunefire@piefed.social 1 day ago
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.