I still think it is great Fediverse is here and evolves. It won’t attract huge numbers of users, but it might not need to to keep going.
It definitely doesn’t need huge numbers. It was ticking along very happily for a good few years before Twitter had a seizure and set fire to itself. It’s fantastic that the fediverse has grown, but unlike purely commercial platforms it can exist at a rate to serve the community on it and need be nothing more. No chasing the spectre of infinite growth, no appeasing shareholders, just community-good for community-good’s sake. Which is rather lovely.
I keep seeing people wang on about how Mastodon / the Fediverse will never be big enough, but, well, my experience of Mastodon is great. I follow nice people, have nice chats, and generally enjoy the vibe far more than I have done on Twitter for a number of years.
So why exactly does Mastodon need to be any bigger? Or by that, do people mean “I need X celebrity to be on there”?
Having been on Reddit for about 10 years now, I would say the need/want for Mastodon/Lemmy/etc to be bigger is to have more variety and more volume in content.
That being said, I also remember my early days on the internet participating on small forums. There was a sense of familiarity and community that I simply haven’t felt on big social media sites.
I don’t know that Mastadon needs to be bigger, but lemmy really needs to grow to compare with reddit. I mean there barely is a photography sub for instance. No travel one I could find, or anything like bifl… And then getting the niche community together. I guess there may still be web forums out there. Personally I liked those, but they are actually more isolated because they don’t federate at all. So lemmy is potentially a feature improvement over phpbbs etc. But you still have to build the communities and get people who are into X but aren’t tech people to those communities.
It definitely doesn’t need huge numbers. It was ticking along very happily for a good few years before Twitter had a seizure and set fire to itself. It’s fantastic that the fediverse has grown, but unlike purely commercial platforms it can exist at a rate to serve the community on it and need be nothing more. No chasing the spectre of infinite growth, no appeasing shareholders, just community-good for community-good’s sake. Which is rather lovely.
I keep seeing people wang on about how Mastodon / the Fediverse will never be big enough, but, well, my experience of Mastodon is great. I follow nice people, have nice chats, and generally enjoy the vibe far more than I have done on Twitter for a number of years.
So why exactly does Mastodon need to be any bigger? Or by that, do people mean “I need X celebrity to be on there”?
Having been on Reddit for about 10 years now, I would say the need/want for Mastodon/Lemmy/etc to be bigger is to have more variety and more volume in content.
That being said, I also remember my early days on the internet participating on small forums. There was a sense of familiarity and community that I simply haven’t felt on big social media sites.
I don’t know that Mastadon needs to be bigger, but lemmy really needs to grow to compare with reddit. I mean there barely is a photography sub for instance. No travel one I could find, or anything like bifl… And then getting the niche community together. I guess there may still be web forums out there. Personally I liked those, but they are actually more isolated because they don’t federate at all. So lemmy is potentially a feature improvement over phpbbs etc. But you still have to build the communities and get people who are into X but aren’t tech people to those communities.