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https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics 2023-04-15: Active Users 1199771 2023-03-15: Active Users 1247487

LesZedCB 3y ago
oh my god a product isn't growing, it must be garbage
- Etesam 3y ago
  user growth is almost imperative for social media products. No one wants to be on a dead social media.
  - rapnie 3y ago
    Strangely enough there's in those few millions there's enough people to have interesting conversations with. ~12 million is larger than population of quite a few countries, where people still manage to have social lives somehow. With just a relatively small amount of followers you'll have engaging conversations on Mastodon/Fediverse. While on Twitter/Birdsite the engagement, unless you are an influencer, is surprisingly low and responses are very low-quality in my experience. But YMMV of course.
    - fhrow4484 3y ago
      Where did you get the 12 million number from?
      - rapnie 3y ago
        You are right. I was off by few million, according to below stats counter. Note that any count is an estimation due to the decentralized nature of the network and instances not counted. I've seen other higher numbers too. https://mastodont.cat/@fediverse/110191027067688818 https://mastodont.cat/@fediverse/110191027067688818 servers: 21,583 (-17, max: 21,600) users: 8,990,211 (-69,061, max: 9,059,272) MAU: 1,469,800 (-8,596, max: 2,444,236)
        rvz 3y ago
        I think you are 10 million off, since the monthly active users shows who is actively using the platform on a monthly basis, not total registrations. If I was to bring up Twitter's total registered users to date, it would be close to the billions. That doesn't mean there are billions of users using it monthly, this is why total registered users as a metric is irrelevant. Twitter's DAUs are in the hundreds of millions (over 220M+). Since that is the case it is clear that the MAUs are even higher. Mastodon's 7 years of existence vs Twitter's 7 years of existence is not even close and is no contest, with Twitter at 90M+ daily active users at the time.
        rapnie 3y ago
        The growth-hacking folks around here should realize that from the perspective of the Fediverse there is no such "contest". This is probably the biggest difference why Twitter is by no means an alternative to Mastodon. There's no need to grow at all costs, move fast and break things, do crazy things to get engagement levels up, no commercial incentives, valuations, VC and shareholders to satisfy. The Fediverse is a network created by people, for people, and it is noticeable in the culture.. if you stop the frantic growth-hacking and take the time to discover it.
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    for a product with angry VCs breathing down your neck, yes. For a protocol/ecosystem run without profit motive? Not really. IRC has existed for how many decades now? And of course those stats are misleadingly timed given that it's up about 3x compared to a year ago.
    - oytis 3y ago
      From the user's point of view really. Why would I spend time on a social network where few of the people I know or interested in are present?
      - Barrin92 3y ago
        for the same reason you're talking to me here on HN right now. Because a personal community of a 1000 people you vibe with is better than an entropy machine of 100 million. Can you even call something a social network if it makes the people on it anti-social?
        Hamuko 3y ago
        Is Hacker News a "personal community"? As far as I know, there's hundreds of thousands of daily visitors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581
        johnchristopher 3y ago
        https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ Summary: In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896991 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24897453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24897453 > Dang comment about the 1% rule from 7 months ago: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622983 > > The number of accounts that have posted to HN this year, divided by the number of IP addresses that have accessed HN, is 0.008. How close that is to the '1% rule' ratio depends on which is the bigger factor: users with more than one IP or IPs with more than one user. We don't know. If the former is bigger, then 0.008 is a lower bound. > > Here's another way. The number of accounts that have posted this year, divided by the number of accounts that have viewed HN while logged in, is 0.36. That doesn't tell us much, but we can estimate the ratio of logged-in users to total users this way: logged-in page views divided by total page views. That ratio is 0.23. We can multiply those two to estimate the ratio of posters to total: > > So the two ways of estimating produce 0.8% and 8% respectively. Both ways are bogus in that they assume things we don't know and mix units that aren't the same, but they're the two I came up with and I don't remember how I did it before. It's interesting that they're almost exactly an order of magnitude apart. That makes it tempting to say the number is probably in between, but that's another cognitive bias talking.
  - eqvinox 3y ago
    Mastodon is social media, but it is not a product. While indeed no one wants to be on dead social media, Mastodon is perfectly fine at a "stable condition". If your friends are on it, why would you leave?
  - gcthomas 3y ago
    Fediverse isn't VC funded and isn't a 'product' in the sense that Twitter is. Obsession with eternal growth is a function of the funding model. Those putting money or time into this are not looking for a financial return - they are trying to sustain a public service.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  I agree

LesZedCB 3y ago

oh my god a product isn't growing, it must be garbage

Etesam 3y ago
user growth is almost imperative for social media products. No one wants to be on a dead social media.
- rapnie 3y ago
  Strangely enough there's in those few millions there's enough people to have interesting conversations with. ~12 million is larger than population of quite a few countries, where people still manage to have social lives somehow. With just a relatively small amount of followers you'll have engaging conversations on Mastodon/Fediverse. While on Twitter/Birdsite the engagement, unless you are an influencer, is surprisingly low and responses are very low-quality in my experience. But YMMV of course.
  - fhrow4484 3y ago
    Where did you get the 12 million number from?
    - rapnie 3y ago
      You are right. I was off by few million, according to below stats counter. Note that any count is an estimation due to the decentralized nature of the network and instances not counted. I've seen other higher numbers too. https://mastodont.cat/@fediverse/110191027067688818 https://mastodont.cat/@fediverse/110191027067688818 servers: 21,583 (-17, max: 21,600) users: 8,990,211 (-69,061, max: 9,059,272) MAU: 1,469,800 (-8,596, max: 2,444,236)
      - rvz 3y ago
        I think you are 10 million off, since the monthly active users shows who is actively using the platform on a monthly basis, not total registrations. If I was to bring up Twitter's total registered users to date, it would be close to the billions. That doesn't mean there are billions of users using it monthly, this is why total registered users as a metric is irrelevant. Twitter's DAUs are in the hundreds of millions (over 220M+). Since that is the case it is clear that the MAUs are even higher. Mastodon's 7 years of existence vs Twitter's 7 years of existence is not even close and is no contest, with Twitter at 90M+ daily active users at the time.
        rapnie 3y ago
        The growth-hacking folks around here should realize that from the perspective of the Fediverse there is no such "contest". This is probably the biggest difference why Twitter is by no means an alternative to Mastodon. There's no need to grow at all costs, move fast and break things, do crazy things to get engagement levels up, no commercial incentives, valuations, VC and shareholders to satisfy. The Fediverse is a network created by people, for people, and it is noticeable in the culture.. if you stop the frantic growth-hacking and take the time to discover it.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  for a product with angry VCs breathing down your neck, yes. For a protocol/ecosystem run without profit motive? Not really. IRC has existed for how many decades now? And of course those stats are misleadingly timed given that it's up about 3x compared to a year ago.
  - oytis 3y ago
    From the user's point of view really. Why would I spend time on a social network where few of the people I know or interested in are present?
    - Barrin92 3y ago
      for the same reason you're talking to me here on HN right now. Because a personal community of a 1000 people you vibe with is better than an entropy machine of 100 million. Can you even call something a social network if it makes the people on it anti-social?
      - Hamuko 3y ago
        Is Hacker News a "personal community"? As far as I know, there's hundreds of thousands of daily visitors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581
        johnchristopher 3y ago
        https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ Summary: In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896991 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24897453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24897453 > Dang comment about the 1% rule from 7 months ago: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622983 > > The number of accounts that have posted to HN this year, divided by the number of IP addresses that have accessed HN, is 0.008. How close that is to the '1% rule' ratio depends on which is the bigger factor: users with more than one IP or IPs with more than one user. We don't know. If the former is bigger, then 0.008 is a lower bound. > > Here's another way. The number of accounts that have posted this year, divided by the number of accounts that have viewed HN while logged in, is 0.36. That doesn't tell us much, but we can estimate the ratio of logged-in users to total users this way: logged-in page views divided by total page views. That ratio is 0.23. We can multiply those two to estimate the ratio of posters to total: > > So the two ways of estimating produce 0.8% and 8% respectively. Both ways are bogus in that they assume things we don't know and mix units that aren't the same, but they're the two I came up with and I don't remember how I did it before. It's interesting that they're almost exactly an order of magnitude apart. That makes it tempting to say the number is probably in between, but that's another cognitive bias talking.
- eqvinox 3y ago
  Mastodon is social media, but it is not a product. While indeed no one wants to be on dead social media, Mastodon is perfectly fine at a "stable condition". If your friends are on it, why would you leave?
- gcthomas 3y ago
  Fediverse isn't VC funded and isn't a 'product' in the sense that Twitter is. Obsession with eternal growth is a function of the funding model. Those putting money or time into this are not looking for a financial return - they are trying to sustain a public service.
bowsamic 3y ago
I agree