There's no Mastodon slump.
Sign-ups continue to increase -- albeit, not at the same rate as in November -- November was a spike.
While Monthly Average Users (MAUs) decreased since November, it's increased again this month (according to @Gargron).
But what's more interesting is that Half Year Average Users (HYAUs) is at a peak.
And we're very close to breaking 1 billion posts per month!
See chart.
https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/stats
Fediverse Observer checks all servers in the fediverse and gives you an easy way to find a home using a map or list.
Mastodon Servers Status. Find a Mastodon server to sign up for, find one close to you!mastodon.fediverse.observer
Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •But this chart for Misskey is even more interesting to me. This is
Average Misskey Total Users by Month.
The growth is absurd -- and it has been validated by multiple sources.
Misskey is part of the Fediverse, and it talks to Mastodon.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •The armchair pundits who talk on and on about Mastodon's non-existent "slump" -- which I've shown isn't happening in a previous chart -- aren't even considering the broader Fediverse.
Here's the Average Pixelfed Posts by Month.
Does this look like a slump to you?
Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •The tech press would love Mastodon to fail and Bluesky to succeed.
Why? Because it fits very neatly into a pre-determined narrative.
Mastodon is supposedly made by a ragtag squad who flew too close to the sun.
And Bluesky is supposedly made by Silicon Valley—they’re supposed to win.
There’s nothing the tech press love more than an outcome that’s predetermined.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •The tech press very much want to frame this as Mastodon vs. Bluesky.
But have they ever considered that if the protocol underlying Bluesky (AT protocol) ever took off, Mastodon could just use it—thereby talking to Bluesky?
It’s as though their narrative of “competition” doesn’t work in this situation!
Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Every app on the Fediverse could talk to Bluesky if they really wanted to, and Bluesky really was as decentralized as they say they want to be.
For example, look at Friendica. It uses at least four protocols to talk to other server software:
1. DRFN
2. Diaspora
3. OStatus
4. ActivityPub
In theory, adding AT protocol shouldn’t be a big deal—it’s open source.
The question is whether Bluesky actually wants to federate with other servers.
vagabond
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •#Nostr has bridged, well actually this history is a little mad, it was #truthsocial crew who wrote the code to bridge #Nostr to #Activertypub, you could not make this stuff up.
Bridges are need, we should piss on any new protocols that don't have at least one bridge to an existing #openweb protocol, and pissing is not just a metaphor, it helps to short out their servers.
#nothingnew is only half a metaphor 😀
vagabond reshared this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •The real competition isn’t “Mastodon vs. Bluesky”.
It’s “ActivityPub protocol vs AT protocol”.
One is used by nearly 25,000 servers. The other is used by one server.
On a per node basis, which one do you think is winning?
Tuxedo Wa-Kamen
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •I think the AT protocol embodies several good ideas. And maybe some curious decisions.
IMHO the most likely scenario is this: Future versions of ActivityPub will contain some of the good ideas.
The two weak points of AT protocol seem to be the as-yet-undecided Distributed Identifiers (this is where I would start to ensure a walled garden, if I was a mean person) and the higher complexity of the implementation (but maybe it just looks that way to me).
Kevin Davidson
in reply to Tuxedo Wa-Kamen • • •