Fediverse

I feel like it's people who want to make money adding another platform to advertise on other platforms.

I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.

Corporations have learned long ago the importance of properly identifying your audience, and the Fediverse is not exempt from that rule. Lemmy is the Fediverse version of Reddit and Mastodon is the Fediverse version of Twitter, and just like these two giants could live together with each other and also with Instagram without stepping on each other's toes, so do their Fediverse versions can live with the Fediverse version of Instagram, PixelFed.

Now we're just missing a Fediverse version of Facebook.

First time i have posted on anything resembling insta in 111 weeks

I wonder how many of those users are the same person with multiple accounts on different platforms.

Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?

Yes. The interface is good and familiar. The majority of the traffic is on one namespace where discoverability is good. Because of the nature of the medium, getting started with no algorithm is a lot easier to stomach than just looking at what your local people have to say.

This is not to bash Mastodon, but they need that algo, which is why Bluesky is hoovering up users. Also, their UI, depending on the server is more tweetdeckish, which might scare off a lot of casuals.

edit: I've been informed the bsky has no algo, so somehow they seem to be getting better results in discover, perhaps single name space or perhaps they have something behind the hood.

Also, to start with, all the journalists FLOODED info, Mastodon, without any algo; you just got a hundred wordsmiths screaming past each other and they all immediately followed each other, so you couldn't just find people like Jeff Jarvis, you got to see everyone he had a professional experience of which is WAY more than anyone is prepared to read :)

Lemmy once had a massive influx of new users, a lot left again and monthly active users has remained somewhat constant for a long time now. Let's wait and see how many people actually stay on PixelFed.

I'm excited. I'm one of those users, but I haven't used it much because I can't find followers. To be fair, I never used Instagram. I like the fediverse, I usually see the same articles get sent through other centralized communities other than reddit (tildes, hacker news, etc), but I enjoy the community discussion the best around here.

Lemmy is full of bad news, hate and toxicity while pixelfed is full of artists and people sharing cool pictures and their passion. Visiting my pixelfed account from 2023 a few days ago set such a contrast with what I see on lemmy that I started using it regularly. It really felt weird to visit such a wholesome place after using lemmy for a long time. Now I use pixelfed to balance out the bad stuff from lemmy for maintaining my mental health and to appreciate the art which is not common on lemmy.

1. The official Pixelfed app just has a nicer looking UI
2. There's not really a competing app for people leaving Insta like there is Bluesky vs Mastodon
3. Pixelfed's content is mostly visual so it's easily digestible to casual users and you don't have to scroll past dry Fedi arguments
4. Better discover features so users don't have to do a bunch of legwork to find who to follow

Just my guesses though, but like any social media it really depends on if big creators will switch and if users stick with it over time

Gonna check this out. Looks interesting thanks.

I find it sort of shocking that you didn't think people who use different types of social media would be swayed by non-micro blogging specific platforms. Nobody wants to join the fediverse because it's the fediverse. They want to join something that's fun and similar to what they're used to.

Micro blogging sucks. I hate it. I've always hated Twitter and none of that hate has come from anything related to who has owned it or their policies. I've just genuinely never felt a desire to communicate with 280 characters (historically 140). The discussion threads are also garbage and all over the place. Why would someone who is used to platforms like Reddit or Instagram want to use Mastodon?

Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn't?

Yes, it's done "not be a micro blogging platform".

I'm aware Mastodon doesn't always have the same character limits that Twitter does, but that's apart from the point.

The tide lifts all the boats... there is also a noticeable uptick in Lemmy registrations, at least here on our instance.

Pixelfed's monthly userbase has gone from 15k to almost 300k in the past month. Absolutely massive for the fediverse.

I'll probably try it out eventually^TM^

So far so good! Some very unscientific observations from spending an absurd amount of time scrolling local on pixelfed.social:

The people coming from Instagram and TikTok seem way less grumpy than the microbloggers. People are having a lot of fun and not complaining about much. It's kind of a trip seeing happy, joyful people on the Fediverse to be honest. Everything in the world suuuuuuuucks right now, so it's felt like a bit of a refuge. Sometimes I'll accidentally bounce over to the global feed and oh man is the change in tone jarring.

People don't seem to have a problem with servers like the Twitter migrants did. Folks are still talking about it a lot on Mastodon though. I've literally not seen a single post about Pixelfed being "too complicated" to succeed, whereas it was (and is) pretty common to see "this place is great and all, but..." posts in the microblogging neighbourhood. Not sure why this is but it might be because the people coming to Pixelfed are generally younger than Mastodon users. This is just a guess, but I'd estimate the average age of Mastodon users is maybe mid-40s. Most of the people pouring into Pixelfed appear to be in their mid-to-late-20s. Perhaps those folks are just more accustomed to servers through Discord and gaming? Though people are generally captioning photos and not writing out lists of things they're unhappy about and they could also just be unaware of servers altogether...

Pixelfed is easily the most diverse "corner" of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren't. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.

I've seen a bunch of people on Instagram promoting Feb 1st as "Global Switch Day" so hopefully it'll keep blowing up.

We can't want the Fediverse to get bigger but be scared of normies when it does. I say welcome in! We should be mindful to listen to the new recruits, because their feedback is the most unbiased.

that's cool, what's the furry instance