You can see it if you check https://fedidb.org/. Monthly active users have gone from just a hair under one million to somewhere around 1.4 million and still growing. How do we think this will go? How do we feel about this influx of new users? Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?

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.

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Pixelfed is really easy to engage with and get a feed started. I think that’s let to its popularity growth. I’ve added mastedon and peertube and neither has made it as easy to onboard.

    I still remember the curve with Lemmy. Pixelfed is clearly the easiest to get started with, and then it’s just pictures!

  • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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 eventuallyTM

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

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

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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.

    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 :)

    • john89@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Looks like pixelfed is just for pictures.

      Seems like it’s the instagram to mastadon’s twitter.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Bluesky doesnt have an algorithm for its discover feed (the default), or at least it didn’t used to have one, but provides an API for building your own feeds which lets you do whatever you like.

      Bluesky’s big growth was from the fact it was, like PF, easy to use and easy to navigate, and all the content was on one namespace.

      Lemmy is an outlier imo. You can interact and repost and find content on different instances easily. Mastodon made following feeds from different instances nearly impossible which turned me off it permanently even if I believe in its value over Bluesky.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Bluesky doesnt have an algorithm for its discover feed

        For not having one, my Discover feed was pretty dead on. Maybe just luck or maybe it was the right time for the right facebook influx.

        edit: they might have one https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueskySocial/comments/1g9zzca/bluesky_dosent_have_an_algorithm_so_what_is_the/

        Lemmy is an outlier

        Lemmy is damn close to Reddit’s mental design, but instead of 27 different subs for news on one place, there are 2-3 different places that have a news sub. news@here and news@there isn’t hard to grasp, I think the platform works remarkably well.

    • oldfart@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      The main Mastodon instance with their official app has discoverability. The difference is so much different from what I normally use - a 3rd party app and a 3rd party instance

  • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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.

    • ThunderLegend@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I hear you. I’m getting tired of the massive amount of posts about trump and elon and politics. I don’t see almost any new content about other stuff.

      • Mubelotix@jlai.luEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Maybe you could try banning words like “elon” or “trump” if you feel overwhelmed. Some apps have this feature

        • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          well, i’m against individual workarounds for common problems, there should be common solutions.

          otherwise you just start alienating 99% of the users who won’t put in the effort to install an extra app just to get that filtering, or if using the web interface on mobile, it’s just not possible.

      • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        It’s like Reddit and you gotta filter out the bullshit. Adding Elon, Musk, Trump, and RFK to my block list improved my mental health quite a bit. Hopefully if it’s egregious enough it will slip through and I won’t be blind sided by some terrible thing they’re doing. That’s the only downside.

        • spookex@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          The problem is that Lemmy isn’t at the point where I can browse it like I do on Reddit.

          After the API thing killed my main reddit app, I just lurk on like 4 1 million+ user sports/video game/military meme subreddits and check on them every 1h/30min to see 10 new posts or any important news that happened. I check r/all maybe like once every few months.

          The relevant lemmys just aren’t that active or don’t have low-effort post rules, so I’m kind of stuck browsing the front page of Lemmy if I want to see more than 10 posts per day

          • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            This is very true unfortunately. Maybe eventually but my fear is that when Lemmy gets that big it turns into Reddit

    • ekZepp@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Many groups of lemmy are full of political content but you can block them and still have a decent amount of contents.

      • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        The political stuff is leaking into any other community though. I’ve already blocked every politics specific and news specific community and a handful other communities and I still get a lot of that. I’m also blocking a few keywords as well, this stuff just gets through regardless of what you do and in no small amount either.

    • Snoopy@peculiar.florist
      0·
      3 months ago

      @Martineski @koncertejo
      Interesting, thank for your feedback.

      For our instance jlai.lu, we try to balance bad news with the forum libre, where we can share picture, movie, book, some daily game…i think it work pretty well because everyone share what they love.

      For News, we separated usa, israel-palestine from world news so it offers a place where anyone can post there or filter. And it let other communities breath.

  • radiantshackles@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Don’t wanna throw cold water on what should be a celebration, but are these all distinct active users? I have separate accounts on Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, and Loops–do I still count as one active user, or am I four? If the latter, I think it’s plenty likely that others like me have simply gotten used to the first fedi platform they chose and are branching out as they learn about more. Maybe doesn’t account for all the growth, but would explain away some of the meteoric rise.

    • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      This is a good point. I’m pretty sure that if you’re active on Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, or even have multiple active accounts on multiple instances of each of those (like a lot of people do), each single one of those would count as a separate active user. I really can’t think of any way that this wouldn’t be the case, because how would the statistics servers know that your the same person?

  • drapermache@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I’m excited. I’m one of those users, but I haven’t used it much because 8 can’t find followers. To be fair, I never used Instagram. I like the fediverse, I see about the same article get sent through other centralized communities other than reddit (tildes, hacker news, etc), but I enjoy the community discussion the best around here.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, I never used Instagram or Twitter so getting started on Pixelfed or Mastodon seems a bit daughnting for me. But I assume it you like platforms like that, you just search out a few people you enjoy and then add more from their content and others do the same and eventually it’ll all click into what people had in those corporate owned and controlled products.

      • liv@lemmy.nzEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I had kind of the opposite. Never used instagram but for some reason pixelfed just felt right and I started posting there when I joined the fediverse.

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Awesome, glad to have you here future friend. If you know of people that may be of interest to add for mastodon/loops/Pixelfed please let me know and don’t be shy, I am always open but haven’t found time to search

    • LandedGentry@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Go back to the absolute fundamentals of social media. Identify a few hashtags that have things you care about, for instance I browse a lot of #filmphotography posts.