Went to a tech meetup in Dublin yesterday and no one I spoke to had heard of the fediverse (or Mastodon, even). I’m talking about software engineers. This blows my mind.
(At least everyone I spoke with has heard of it now, though. And when people do hear about it – as with the #SmallWeb – they do get it. And they’re excited about it.)
@aral same experience with friends, sister, brother, parents, extended family.
it is a bubble.
but people mention bluesky.
i do think it is because of marketing and reach and how everyone on web2 social media can be targeted with that stuff so they hear about it eventually.
this is totally not necessary for mastodon. where and how would they learn about it?
i wonder if anything can be done about it at all or are we doomed? 🥶
it is hard to think of a strategy
meta, adoption of fedi, bluesky
@serapath @aral I think it's important to recognize that projects like the fediverse operate on an entirely different timeline from corporate platforms.
The only way something like Bluesky can become successful (by their metrics) is by making a splash, and having everyone learn about it at once, and move over before anyone asks too many questions and figures out that it's kind of crap.
But the fediverse, and other communal projects, don't need to do that. Our metric of success is (or at least should be) one of sustainable growth; and for that, it is entirely fine for people to learn about it and move over slowly. We're not on a deadline, as long as things keep going in the right direction. We're not subject to hype cycles if we create a nice space.
This is very important because you *can't* compete with corporations using their own playbook. You have to take advantage of their weaknesses and your strengths, and "not needing a mass move to retain users" is an example of such a strength for genuine community projects.
meta, adoption of fedi, bluesky
yeah, it makes sense. I hope you are right :-) I'd be happy.
One technical annnoyance to me though is mastodon not offering keypair based accounts, but fundamentally works on email/password.
Not that anyone needs to use it and it could totally behind advanced settings, but just to give people the option imho.
Otherwise I wouldn't mind seeing Facebook/Insta/Tiktok/X/Threads/Blsky/etc.. burn.
meta, adoption of fedi, bluesky
@joepie91 @serapath This.