That is the paradox of popularity. In the beginning, people are like "why aren't more people using this; everybody should be using this; it is better than ________." And then once it gains popularity, these same people are "why are all of these outsiders ruining our little hamlet?; I didn't mean those people should use it; I liked it better when it was small."

The fact is, with growth, things change.

Mastodon has to be the prime example. Everyone who has been there in 2019 can tell you.

First it was just a bunch of geeks. Then came the exodus of otaku and furries from Twitter. Then more "casual" users trickled over. And starting in November of 2022, Mastodon was overrun by people who thought it had been launched the same year.

In fact, the same can be said about all Fediverse projects that were around back then. There certainly must have been Friendica or Hubzilla users who wished for the Fediverse in general to have more users. What they got was millions of Mastodon users who couldn't comprehend that parts of the Fediverse already had a culture, one that was vastly different from what they have helped establish on Mastodon.

But because of the federated nature of the #Fedi, there is still hope because people can still start small to medium sized communities, often based on a niche or a theme, and still survive and still maintain their community's culture.

I guess this works the best outside of Mastodon where nobody who wants to run away from Musk while having no clue about the Fediverse will ever land.

@Jupiter Rowland

I guess this works the best outside of Mastodon where nobody who wants to run away from Musk while having no clue about the Fediverse will ever land.

Could you elaborate further?

@Scott M. Stolz

But because of the federated nature of the #Fedi, there is still hope because people can still start small to medium sized communities, often based on a niche or a theme, and still survive and still maintain their community's culture.

Totally agree; between that and 'privacy', people will come, but they won't necessarily stay, which is the sad part. Convenience will always win over anything else.. at least (I feel) for the majority of users.
Whats your opinion on retention?

@Dale Hitchenor

Totally agree; between that and 'privacy', people will come, but they won't necessarily stay, which is the sad part. Convenience will always win over anything else.. at least (I feel) for the majority of users.
What's your opinion on retention?

Three thing primarily:

1. Better Moderation tools at the user level. People should have better control over their feed and who they interact with. And block lists are not sufficient for this task by itself.
2. More federated communities (forums, discussion groups), which by their very nature have better moderation tools and tend to be a closer set of people who often become friends.
3. The network effect. The more people connected to a network, the more useful the network is.

But we probably should be more specific. Retention on the fediverse-at-large or for a particular fediverse software?

I think we won't have a problem with retention on the greater fediverse level. A lot of platforms are building on it.

The bigger problem is that many platforms do not have very good moderation tools, which opens its users up to harassment and trolls. The biggest reason blocking is such a big part of Mastodon culture is because that is one of the only tools they have. As the saying goes, if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. More privacy and moderation tools would empower and protect users.

It is one of the reason why I am not building yet another fediverse social media app. I am building fediverse-enabled community apps. There is a big difference.

And, on a side note, we probably should educate people that public means public. If they want privacy, they should use a platform that allows private conversations and private discussion groups. And they are available now.

Great post, and a thought provoking reply.

To answer your query, the fediverse at large..

As far as fediverse specific software, there is something out there for everyone, and whatever kind of content they are pushing; whether it be macroblogging, microblogging, video, imagery, or whatever it is that they are trying to do..

I feel that the items in your numbered list, number 3 is very relevant, concerning retention.. retention won't be strong, if the users move back to closed source alternative; where their friends are, or the creators/ publishers of content that they like to consume are, for example.

However, to elaborate further on the other two items (more so, number 2), I've considered ease of deployment to be a great driving factor for a long time now; that's why the Hubzilla docker image that I am using, was an absolute god-send. I wouldn't have my own instance without it, and I can focus on enjoying the software rather than banging my head trying to figure out how to deploy and troubleshoot any issues.

Making it more accessable/ easier to deploy, allows content creators/ community leaders to easily and readily provide a foundation for said community, without needing to be insanely tech savvy or paying for a service to host, which may not always be an option nor would it be conducive if one had a steadfast 'privacy-centric' mantra.

What are your thoughts on ease of deployment? and what should we, as (depending on how you look at it) purveyors of the fediverse, be focusing on to encourage growth and retention? I mean, without just sitting and waiting for Twitter/ Facebook to bite the dust (again) and ride the incoming wave of new users.

@Dale Hitchenor

What are your thoughts on ease of deployment? and what should we, as (depending on how you look at it) purveyors of the fediverse, be focusing on to encourage growth and retention? I mean, without just sitting and waiting for Twitter/ Facebook to bite the dust (again) and ride the incoming wave of new users.

I think there needs to be multiple ways to set up a Hubzilla website. We have Yunohost for those who want to self-host, we have a Hubzilla Docker image, we have git-based command line installs, and we have a couple of web hosts that offer Hubzilla as a pre-installed application. We just need to educate people about these options and have better documentation.

As far as retention goes, there are lots of things that you can do besides depending on the network effect.

1. Making it more user friendly and easy to sign up and use.
2. Build communities, and encourage the building of communities (forums, groups, etc.).
3. Exclusive content.
4. Exclusive features.

I will be using the "content and community" tactic to grow most of my websites. The fediverse functionality would attract some people, but for others, they would come for the content, and stay for the community. I am not depending on social media functionality alone to increase retention.

But if you are just looking at the social media aspect, we don't need everyone to join. We just need to create communities where people want to come back time and time again.

@Scott M. Stolz

We have Yunohost for those who want to self-host, we have a Hubzilla Docker image, we have git-based command line installs, and we have a couple of web hosts that offer Hubzilla as a pre-installed application.

I didn't know we had any official ways to install, besides the .homeinstall script; no official docker image at least.  However, I will admit I've never used yunohost.. it doesn't have a real good rap in some parts of the interwebz.

So as far as retention goes, you say:

We just need to create communities where people want to come back time and time again.

I agree, and it will be interesting to see how fediverse devs utilize this knowledge to proliferate

@Dale Hitchenor Right now I don't think there are any "official" ways to install other than the command line. But I think that the Hubzilla Association, which is working on documentation, will create some documentation explaining the different ways.