cross-posted from: lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473
Compared against the predominant incumbent social media platforms, the fediverse is very small.
information sources:
An elite 1.5 million.
Relative size comparison of social media platforms (December 2023)
Submitted 11 months ago by jersan@lemmy.whynotdrs.org to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/pictrs/image/c2e91101-162c-4aa5-bbba-179767474478.png
Comments
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Staiden@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
I’m absolutely fine with 1.5 million. I enjoy lemmy much more than reddit. I feel like content and conversations here are better. None of the karma farming and corporate promotion disguised as natural content.
sukhmel@programming.dev 11 months ago
Although you’re correct, I find fediverse lacking in the department of the more niche stuff, e.g. fandoms of specific games, communities by geo proximity, obscure hobbies.
But well, Reddit wasn’t like this from the start and I hope the diversity and smaller communities will be here instead of there with time.
Sheeple@lemmy.world 11 months ago
People need to realize that it’s okay for smaller forums to exist. Imagine if we measured fucking discord servers by numbers
ericjmorey@programming.dev 11 months ago
1.5 million is almost entirely Mastodon users which have no clue how Lemmy’s commenting culture works so rarely contribute in a way that makes sense to both the Mastodon commenter and the Lemmy comenter/poster at the same time.
jadelord@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
For now.
rsuri@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m happy with this. I feel like Lemmy is an oasis of nerds in a social media world of toxic people obsessed with all the wrong things.
andrew@feddit.de 11 months ago
das ist richtig
xX_fnord_Xx@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Bep bup! German Bot here!
“Das ist richtig” means “That is true”
Like and follow this bot so it’s creator may someday claw themselves out of the joyless pit they have dug themselves.
atmur@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Facebook forgot it existed too, they just recently made it possible to delete threads accounts without deleting Instagram
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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 they don’t listen to feedback anymore. What’s the point?
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
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.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’d like to see the breakout in the Fediverse for Mastodon vs. all others.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 11 months ago
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 11 months ago
The Fediverse is going to get a lot bigger once Meta turns on federation for Threads.
TheMadnessKing@lemdro.id 11 months ago
Mastodon is by the biggest contributor to Fediverse as a whole. Has been adopted by tons of Orgs like EU, W3C, Verge, Flipboard, etc.
njordomir@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
oce@jlai.lu 11 months ago
Didn’t FB used some shady practice to make their users fall into Threads without noticing?
hangonasecond@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m just curious what you thought might have happened to Snapchat? What app took its place in your estimation?
atmur@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There’s no way reddit has more “real” users than Twitter // X. Maybe with bots but half the shit on reddit is a Twitter screen cap or repost.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s a strange read on Reddit. I’ve heard people say this before, and it’s baffling.
Reddit is, and always has been, a link aggregator first and foremost. Of course it’s reposts and screenshots of others sites. That’s kind of the point. Yo bring you Twitter so you don’t have to actually be one twitter.
Sheeple@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not to mention a supermajority of reddit users are inactive. Recap has shown that even with minimal activity, you end up in the top 1% of reddit users.
That means reddit has roughly 5 million active users. Meanwhile nearly every person that creates a lemmy account, is active too.
trafficnab@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
The 90-9-1 rule, 1% of users create content, for 9% of users to interact with (upvote, comment, whatever), while 90% exclusively lurk
ericjmorey@programming.dev 11 months ago
nearly every person that creates a lemmy account, is active
This is false. There’s about a 10:1 ratio of Lemmy accounts registered to lemmy accounts posting comments.
legios@aussie.zone 11 months ago
A couple of years ago I ended up in the 1% because of one single thing I posted 2 weeks after I signed up purely to generate some rage because so many subs needed minimum karma… Can completely attest to this.
poppy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I suppose this is related to your “users are inactive” point but I also feel like it’s more common on Reddit to have multiple/alt accounts. Hell, in my time on Reddit I think I made 7+ accounts.
agent_flounder@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think Xitter has it’s fair share of bots…
doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 11 months ago
WE’RE ON THE RADAR, BOYS!
TheWanderer@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Let’s goooo!
MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
TO THE ATMOSPHEEEEEERE!
notsofunnycomment@mander.xyz 11 months ago
And girls
CowsLookLikeMaps@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
WE’RE ON THE RADAR, LEMMINGS!
WhatThaFudge@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Baby steps are better than no steps for sure
Bearsquad@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So Facebook is:
Boring Full of bots Soulless
An we are:
Real people mostly Engaged A cute little dot!
Like someone said, 1,5M people are enough for me, specially if they are mostly active and it seems they are. Are they stats for mean user activity?
hibsen@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not being able to scroll recycled content all day has been hugely detrimental to me. I’ve actually started reading books again. BOOKS.
asterfield@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine how you bear it
Levsgetso@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Same. It’s amazing how much time I have when the algorithm isn’t shoving me endless content, trying to keep me engaged.
chitak166@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Quality > quantity.
The masses have been duped into forgetting that.
isles@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You can show more ads with more quantity, any ad driven platform will trend that way.
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well you know, “quantity has a quality all its own”
MataVatnik@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When I saw that number I was pleasantly surprised.
Arelin@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Wow, the Fediverse is actually visible :0
zaphod@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I wonder how long it’ll take before we finally collectively reject the SV ethos that size is the only metric that matters and success is only achieved monopoly…
There was a time when Usenet and BBBses and IRC was a tiny and yet people still found value through community in those places.
Maybe, and I know this is a wild idea, platforms don’t have to include every human on the planet to be meaningful, relevant, or valuable.
affiliate@lemmy.world 11 months ago
this was very comforting to read
whereisk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I was an avid Reddit user but dropped it like a stone in the kerfuffle - it took a while but Lemmy has now replaced that 90%
I’d love to see a content propagation analysis.
My sense is that a ton of new memes are first shared on Lemmy then shared across to other social media.
…Ok, so the niche forums don’t have critical mass yet, and you’d have to post to some general thread to get any response - but all the cool and thoughtful people are here, so the level of general discourse is higher, I love it.
indepndnt@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Lately I’ve been seriously thinking about resurrecting my FidoNet node. It looks like FidoNet still exists!
friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Nice! I just played through Road To Gehenna and it really made me want to do a modern Band equivalent.
admin@lemmy.xcoolgroup.com 11 months ago
FidoNet does still exist, but it's commonly called "fight-o-net" for a reason, as there are... some characters there.
If you do resurrect your node, I'd suggest also picking up FSXnet, as it's the second largest network, is better maintained, and has a no-politics-or-religion rule that makes it way more pleasant to be on.
Or, you know, you could call one of the BBSs out there, and make a sysop's day by being a user, as non-sysop users are not super common, at this point. You can try my BBS at http://bbs.stormbbs.com or telnet://telnet.stormbbs.com, if you'd like to see FSXnet and FidoNet in their current lives.
But there are plenty of other BBSs out there, too, and my BBS is really only special because I have an ANSI calendar with a different graphic every day that I made 370-ish graphics for. It celebrates a holiday every day.
And if you're wondering about BBS networks in general, I recently found out about https://clrghouz.bbs.dege.au/domain/list , which has way more info than I was expecting about what the available FTN networks look like.
friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I hear this one loud and clear. I was in the internet in 96, and worked in SV for 20 years, and when I saw the small number for Lemmy in this graphic it made me happy.
MrTolkinghoen@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Same. We don’t need to be 500m
casualhippo@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
There are dozens of us! Dozens!!
GuyDudeman@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It does feel like a small pond, but it’s a nice one, with smart fish.
Dr_Fetus_Jackson@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I must confess to missing the vastness of Reddit, but I’ll never go back. The company I keep here is better, by far.
hexabs@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The Germans have a word for us too!
xenoclast@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Fuck Spez… amirite ? Guys?
Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 11 months ago
I know it’s not the full truth(maybe?) but I feel like we’re not attracting the worst kind.
And you know what?
One and a half million people, I can work with that. I know it’s not going to stay that number but it’s seriously enough for anyone, except some soul-less megacotp ofc.
Yay! I love it!
crittecol@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s nuts how a difference of hundreds of millions of people doesn’t actually feel like a ton more people or provide any better quality except in some niche spots
peopleproblems@lemmy.world 11 months ago
we really need to stop calling it formerly Twitter and just call it Shitter.
he ruined the platform, the people can ruin a name
spudwart@spudwart.com 11 months ago
‘LinkedIn’
LinkedIn is as much Social Media as talking with your manager is Socializing.
It’s really plastic and fake feeling there, more so than anywhere else.
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There is an interesting, and almost universal phenomenon on reddit that every time a subreddit gets past about 40,000 subscribers, the discussion quality immediately drops off a cliff, unless extremely harsh moderation policies are implemented to explicitly weed out low effort content which brings its own set of problems.
My theory on why this occurs is the scaling power of moderation. I think you computer people are probably very familiar with the concept of scalability, and that size is its own challenge at the hyperscale. So for a centralized system like Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, moderation can only scale vertically, so a huge moderation team is needed to contend with the scale of these platforms alone, which also forces the need of personalized recommendation algorithms to promote this that are actually interesting to individual users.
Reddit was able to partially avoid this phenomenon with the subreddit system, which means everyone was able to effectively manage their own, smaller subgroups who shares common interest without intervention from the site admin/mods to achieve a form of pseudo-horizontal scaling. You can also see the success of that with Facebook Groups, which are one of the few reasons why people still use Facebook for social media even though they do not want to interact with the current Facebook audience.
Lemmy, and the rest of the fediverse platforms would suffer the problems even less, as now every group admin can now be completely independent from one another, which means that real horizontal scaling can be achieved and hopefully preserving the discussion quality to a degree as it grows.
NENathaniel@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Why this many people use Snapchat is incomprehensible
There are so many good messenger apps and all of them, Snapchat’s giant userbase remains
recapitated@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think this is great. It might be 1/1000th of these other systems, but I think the fediverse is at a tipping point where I’m not seeing the same things every day. I don’t think critical mass needs to be a ranked competition.
Luft@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Can we please try to deadname Twitter harder? As a person who had an x in their name, it’s really annoying to have some dickhead copyright it
vsis@feddit.cl 11 months ago
MartinXYZ@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I’m surprised Reddit is bigger than Xitter. Is that mostly because people have been leaving the Musk project in recent years?
csm10495@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
LinkedIn has over a billion users. I got a t-shirt for it.
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s cozy here :)
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Why bluesky and threads should embrace ActivityPub.
Social media is splintering - accelerated by the fall of Twitter. It’s not 2010 and a social media network is never going to be what twitter was in 2010. They’ll might as well develop social media that can talk to other networks
Naz@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Haha, now show us a map of the size of different stars compared to Sol (ours, in the local solar system).
Sometimes the small stars and communites are the most important. ;)
Art3sian@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Is this right?
Twitter and LinkedIn don’t match the Wiki data and should be inverted, and is the Wiki link correct pointing to 2021?
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 11 months ago
more =/= better quality
Pandantic@midwest.social 11 months ago
Hmm… could this be why I like it better?
hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Who doesn’t like an underdog? 😤
Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de 11 months ago
Damn, if only Spez didn’t have fucked up Reddit. I even wanted to invest in that IPO, but now I’m not going to.
De_Narm@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As always, you guys are way to fixated on size.
agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 11 months ago
Thing is, you have to measure from the user base on the underside, this graphic obviously uses the wrong method.
a4ng3l@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Meh. Not like there are shareholders to appraise of growth…
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Lemmy alone creates more content that I care about. This is fine.
Sine_Fine_Belli@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not always
Lemmy still doesn’t create enough content that I want
But I try to use lemmy more anyways
Hopefully more people will use lemmy more
verysoft@kbin.social 11 months ago
It's not the size of the ship, it's the motion of the ocean.
Pandantic@midwest.social 11 months ago
Yeah, and let me tell you… Facebook’s motion does nothin for me, as big as it is…
cmbabul@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s true but it does take a long time to get to England in a row boat
kokesh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yes. Quality is the key thing about fediverse. Also - size doesn’t mean everything. Black holes are small, but mighty. Lemmy sucks most of my spare time already.
FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 11 months ago
My take away from this is lemmy is so good it’s actually a gravitational singularity pretending to be a social network 
KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah technique is really important too.
DanglingFury@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So is my wife
ShitOnABrick@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wasn’t fixated on size when I met your mom