Communities on alternative social media platforms like the fediverse and Bluesky tend to create narratives about how their networks grow. For both networks the narrative is fairly similar: Big Tech platforms and their leaders behave badly, which in turn causes users to search for more ethical alternatives. This narrative is visible in the fediverse’s understanding of the 2022 Twitter Migration and Bluesky’s explosive growth in 2024. But what happens when these migration waves disappear, even though the conditions for them do not? Musk’s continuous egregious actions have not led to new growth for the fediverse and Bluesky, indicating that our narratives of growth need updating. Meanwhile, the continuous growth of Threads shows that cultural impact might just matter more than user counts.
My own take on it is that growth is not very important in terms of how a network develops. The only truly successful growth is that which happens completely organically. Worrying about why one service has ‘stopped’ growing is pointless. Those who are unhappy jump ship - those who remain are likely people who are never going to and/or bots or influencers who aren’t interested in being part of a community just finding a way to exploit it.
I would propose so-called ‘smaller’ networks (such as the fediverse) concentrate on quality not quantity. That has the duel benefit of making the experience for current users even better and makes the network attractive to those who are outside looking in.
I think with that is an unexpected inflection point that looks inevitable in hindsight where one network dies and another thrives. It happened with Digg and Myspace. You if you focus on long term organic growth it can happen but unknown when