cross-posted from: lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473
Compared against the predominant incumbent social media platforms, the fediverse is very small.
information sources:
Look we are on the map!
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
albaloo@lemm.ee 11 months ago
jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I like to imagine a little escape pod coming out of the Reddit bubble and drifting in to the Lemmy dot representing my migration.
Pandantic@midwest.social 11 months ago
Praying that our mothership would just blow up already.
words_number@programming.dev 11 months ago
Seriously, who on earth uses facebook? Lol
The only website on this graphic that has some actual value (apart from the fediverse of course) is youtube.
theangryseal@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My wife uses Facebook every day.
She’s a very family oriented person and she’s gonna be wherever they are.
She’s the kind of person who wakes up and calls her mom, then her grandma, then her sisters every single day. Hell, she even talks to her nephews every day and they’re toddlers.
There really isn’t anything that compares as far as that goes.
trk@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Seriously, who on earth uses facebook?
Me? I know it’s the current hotness to not be on there, but I don’t get sites like Instagram / TickTock / Snapchat where its just reacting to photos and images. I want words dammit.
GhostTheToast@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Didn’t Facebook build infrastructure and give out free phones in India and other developing nations to get them online? I’m sure it was more to harvest their data, but I’m sure that counts pretty solidly for them
sfgifz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They got a service provider to let its users browse Facebook for free, but that was banned a year later for being unfair. It’s still a thing in other developing counties I guess.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 11 months ago
I do.
Cyo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Me, tbh I don’t like meta but the groups in facebooks is probably what keeps me there, for example there is a group about an anime and the guys there literally translate the new volumes of the novel months faster than other piracy sites, almost in the moment, there is also the memes and other posts that only appear around those groups. Not even reddit has that content, so what keeps me attached to facebook is mainly anime groups
shadowbert@kbin.social 11 months ago
3 billion of them. So, over a third of the population of earth does (at least according to this graphic).
r_se_random@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
LinkedIn is pretty useful fwiw
njm1314@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You got to think at least 2/3 of Reddit is Bots right
Selkie@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Same with Facebook, them or dead accounts
egeres@lemmy.world 11 months ago
LET’S GOOO
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
yes, but slowly.
TheNanaimoBarScene@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I’m surprised Snapchat is that popular. It’s not something I hear about too much anymore.
thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
it’s one of the only commonly known messaging platform to most people that:
1: isn’t owned by a company that many people hate, even if they don’t know much about it.
2: isn’t platform locked and doesn’t discriminate.
3: doesn’t require money or verification to use.
i can see how it’s kinda settled out this way. whatsapp never caught on in the u.s. because everyone here was happy with sms and mms when the rest of the world was picking up Whatsapp. from what i understand that’s literally just because texting was cheap in the u.s… now people want more than mms, but apple is being apple about it so we need a third party app. by this point Whatsapp is owned by Facebook and the “privacy” of it is openly mocked by the average non tech person. everyone hates Facebook so the idea of willingly adopting another Facebook messenger that you’re not already on seems crazy. anyone that would accept that is just going to use Facebook messenger instead. anyone that wouldn’t will find something better.
Snapchat has no big controversies. no one knows who owns them. they don’t really try to be more than a messaging platform. i can see why people would uncritically choose it as their default. i bet it’s big among the kids who don’t play that whole blue bubble iphone supremacy game, but don’t use discord either. so i guess the non nerdy kids that aren’t elitist dicks. that’s who I’d guess uses it amongst the youth these days.
PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 11 months ago
And here I am, using Google messages, Facebook messenger, Whatsapp and line. And teams and discord. And steam chat.
Oof
UsernameIsTooLon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s the WhatsApp equivalent in the US tbh. People ask for each other’s Snapchat instead of numbers sometimes these days
Suoko@feddit.it 11 months ago
So this graph should include WA, TG, signal, matrix etc
AsheHole@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Everyone at my work uses Snapchat regularly. I was pretty surprised to hear them all mentioning it as I hadn’t really heard of it in years.
Emerald@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It seems a lot of kids these days in the US use it
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
There’s some merit to whether those daily active accounts are people, and the quality of the folks engaged as those accounts.
Twitter has more users, and a lot of static too, like people posting pictures of their paninis. I’m also sure there’s a large percentage of automated/bot accounts on Twitter; they’re active, but not posting anything you’ll care about. Same goes for Facebook and Reddit… There’s more but I’ll stop there. I’m sure you all get the picture.
Fact is, you can have 5 billion daily active user accounts, and still have very little content anyone cares about. A nontrivial number of posts are news updates either from media outlets or business accounts/companies that are simply a mass posted and shortened version of some PR message or something with a link to the information. Simply bringing the information to people where they are, no matter how few on Twitter or FB are actually reading what they post.
I feel like Lemmy has a lot of content because the majority of accounts are real people, so there’s a better capability for discussion. It may be fewer overall people, by comparison, but it is, in many ways, more valuable and entertaining.
IDK, I’m just some guy.
Roastchicken@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I see a lot of posts that are bot reposts with zero engagement. Maybe I need to find a better instance.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
start blocking users and communities you don’t care about, or you can auto-ignore bot users in your profile; both should help you out quickly.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I’m on Lemmy.ca, and the “all” view shows all kinds of various instances. Most commonly Lemmy.world but others too.
It’s all federated. Unless your instance is defederated then you should have access to everything that Lemmy has to offer. You just need to find how to access it.
droidpenguin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Happy to be part of the top 1% in this case.
BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I would say a good billion of Facebook users are either highly inactive, actually inactivated but Facebook is still counting them, scammers and porn bots, and dead people. Many people made an account in like 2011 and promptly forgot their password and never logged in again I’m sure. And lord knows Facebook isn’t honest about anything.
I’m surprised Twitter is so comparatively small but it’s also a weird site in that you literally talk into a void, at least Facebook you know your uncle is reading your post or whatever.
Doorbook@lemmy.world 11 months ago
jThe post says monthly active users…
pandarisu@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t know if they still do, but Facebook used to count viewing a web page with a Facebook “like” button as being an active user
BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Ok my bad. But what do they count as activity would also be a good question. Posting? Just opening the app? What constitutes activity to Satan Zuckerberg? I wouldn’t be surprised if just accidentally opening the app even if you’re never posting or reading counts.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Monthly active (non-human?) users?
Shadywack@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think that was understood, and I’m also of the opinion that Facebook is full of shit.
thawed_caveman@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Since 2010 i’ve made three Facebook accounts, deleted one and never use the other two. Active users would be a more useful metric.
It’s been commented on before that, for its size, Twitter has a disproportionate influence not just on the internet but even on politics. This is still the case today because no good alternatives have emerged for the mainstream yet.
DavidGarcia@feddit.nl 11 months ago
I surprised Threads, LinkedIn and Snapchat have that many
callcc@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I would have loved to see the parts that are not under the US-American influence. What are Asian, African or South Americans using?
kpw@kbin.social 11 months ago
Facebook, mostly. For China it's WeChat.
Kierunkowy74@kbin.social 11 months ago
For China:
- TikTok is called there Douyin
- microblogging is mainly done on Sina Weibo
- Baidu Baike (by Baidu search engine) is counterpart of Reddit?
callcc@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Thanks for the information!
Kierunkowy74@kbin.social 11 months ago
Not actually the region you asked about, but wykop.pl is actually larger in Poland, than Reddit.
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
What a lovely site! NSFW/not safe for egalitarians
Tell me that’s like the Truth Social of Poland and only reflective of the extreme right (preferably lie if it’s not)
deus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t know what makes you think South Americans are not under US influence cause I can tell you things in Brazil look exactly the same: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter… well, Whatsapp is also absurdly popular around here but I don’t think it qualifies.
callcc@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sure, that formulation was not very good. But you get the idea. There is not only the “western” social media world. But what does it look like? I have no clue about what people use in Africa for example.
Wahots@pawb.social 11 months ago
What’s app is also Facebook.
So facebook, threads, What’sapp, Instagram are all FB owned lol. They need to be broken up for being that huge.
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Something like WhatsApp >> Youtube > Instagram > TikTok > Telegram > Facebook > Reddit > Twitter, with some variations and local additions from country to country.
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Damn! I didn’t know so many people still use Facebook. But it still doesn’t sound right. I definitely don’t feel like 37.5% of Earth’s population uses Facebook.
lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
yeah, there are quite a number of people who have multiple accounts. almost everyone I know does. same goes for whatsapp and instagram. it’s still a massive number nonetheless
atyaz@reddthat.com 11 months ago
I’m in the 1%
Star@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Surprised to see LinkedIn’s 930 million MAU! I might have heard someone mention it irl like 2 times my whole life? But maybe that’s cuz I’m not in the job market yet.
BattleGrown@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It has different aspects to it. Big part of it is job hunters i believe, but i use it mostly for promotion of my research, discussion with other researchers, policy discussions and following conferences / webinars and news about climate related stuff. I use it daily.
Star@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Oh wow, I didn’t know it’s used for research and policy discussions as well! That’s pretty neat.
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s big for sales people too - I research who is the right person to contact at an organization, and also to find out what they’ve been up to lately that might be useful in a sales pitch.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I agree it’s has the corporate and institutional side of tech news that Lemmy doesn’t have.
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
What about Pinterest? Laugh all you want but they have more users than Twitter.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
God I hate Pinterest.
Not only do they steal pictures in bad quality from other sites and write their website in such a way to always come out on top of search results, it also takes multiple seconds to close the webpage.
xX_fnord_Xx@lemmy.world 11 months ago
: pours one out for every dude that had a GF that lost herself to a Pinterest Interest wall: (or vice versa)
vivadanang@lemm.ee 11 months ago
man I wish they’d keep pintrest out of google image search. yeah I know I can manually exclude their url from search but why is it there in the first place lol useless for finding reference material
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
My wife uses Pinterest any time she needs a list with pictures - things like recipes (organized by type - dinner meals, breakfasts, cakes, etc), outfit/clothing ideas, inspiration for projects around the house, etc. I’ve got lists in Google Keep and links in Pinboard.in but she’s a very visual thinker and prefers having pictures.
njordomir@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Great graphic and thank you for sharing.
Now let’s filter out bots, low quality trolls, NPCs, and content that isn’t easily searchable. It’s definitely an interesting diagram, and, though it is fascinating, I think its a 1 dimensional view of the social space.
I prefer to engage around ideas and topics, rather than specific users or content producers, so having a good search and topic based boards or groups immediately puts a site miles ahead for me. Reddit and Lemmy excel at this, but some of the others leave a lot to be desired. As someone who used FB to organize and manage a topic based social group in real life, with a Facebook group of 1000+ participants, FB has some good groups, but the interface is absolute rubbish and I would migrate to just about anything else if I could get people to move.
I guess my point is that we lump these together as “social media”, but that’s a broad category that holds some very distinct subcategories that excel at very different things.
Sheeple@lemmy.world 11 months ago
To add to this, 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.
Based on that one can calculate that 99% (provably more but reddit recap doesn’t go smaller than 1% on display) are inactive accounts, which means reddits true size lies at around 5 million or less. Barely 10 times bigger than Lemmy
Rolando@lemmy.world 11 months ago
reddits true size lies at around 5 million or less. Less than 5 times Lemmy’s size.
Lemmy doesn’t have 1.5 million active users; that’s how many active users the Fediverse as a whole has; most of those are Mastodon users. Lemmy has around 32K active users. So if your 5 million number is right, Reddit is around 156 times larger than us.
GoddessOfGouda@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What was twitter at pre elonification?
clearedtoland@lemmy.world 11 months ago
🤨 when did Reddit overtake Twitter? Reddit used to be a niche destination that you’d barely see it in comparison to the other big name sites.
doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
I’d be interested to see how different it would look if we only counted average active daily users
vsh@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Where’s Tumblr?
Rooki@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Facebook has like many thousands or even hundreds of thousands really dead accounts ( of dead people ), some of those accounts are just Meta accounts as they got forced to create a facebook account, but i think those are very low in the hundreds or with low probability in the thousands.
LinkedIn isnt really a social network for me, its rather you state your shit and then hope a recruiter asks if you are interested after 6 months.
Twitch is a entertainment platform ( like youtube ) not social media.
unsaid0415@szmer.info 11 months ago
basically im very smol
mtchristo@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Surprised a boring platform like LinkedIn has that many users.
GutsBerserk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Slowly and steadily. This platform has potential.
the_third@feddit.de 11 months ago
Yes. Now, if we could implement an irl place without all those people as well, I think I’d like that. Everything contains idiots but I find the overall company around here at least somewhat filtered of them.
TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee 11 months ago
We’re on the map!
cogitoprinciple@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wonder how many users Matrix has?
tegs_terry@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Is YouTube a socmed site?
crawancon@lemm.ee 11 months ago
if the fediverse gets to hundreds of millions of users, we’d better hope that we solve for moderation.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
For the biggest ones: How many of those active users are bots, advertisers, and scammers? I’d guess about half on Facebook.
Also, is it considered “active” if you have a dormant account but have the app installed on your phone and it still watches what you’re doing? What if you only use it to communicate with family because it’s the only internet they understand?
Further, what about duplicate accounts or “secretive” secondary accounts so you can click on the depraved stuff you like without that showing in your public feed?
I feel like the real numbers for the big ones are massively inflated by issues like these.
cron@feddit.de 11 months ago
The Fediverse is by design affected by inflated numbers. If one user uses three different services, the user is counted three times. However, for the Fediverse it doesn’t really matter - that number of total users is just as irrelevant like the total number of used email addresses.
PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Same with reddit. Almost everyone has throwaway accounts there.
jersan@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 11 months ago
For sure.
with respect to bots, as of this time I don’t think it’s a problem that can be fully solved, although I do think over a long enough timeline the fediverse is probably the best suited to handle that problem.
I wanted to see a visualization of the relative size comparison, so I used the data that was available on Wikipedia, but this data is approximate at best.
dan@upvote.au 11 months ago
Almost all platforms use “monthly active users” - anyone that uses it at least once per month is considered an active user.