GNU social team member here, so I'm biased, but yes people have personal instances (I ran one on a plug server several years ago - http://foocorp.net/projects/f

GNU social team member here, so I'm biased, but yes people have personal instances (I ran one on a plug server several years ago - http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/ http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/ ). The federation works well, the only issues I've had are when people's themes for their sites have got in the way.