Catching up with some of the news coming out of the Atmosphere conference.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

So, Bluesky is getting more crypto VC money, more AI, and a full year of steadily declining activity.

Bluesky User Growth and Active Users

See how activity and usage of Bluesky has been growing over time. How many users are currently active? How many posts are posted daily on Bluesky?

(bluefacts.app)

While the fediverse is getting quotes, UX/UI improvements, starter packs.

Hm!

[ricci@discuss.systems]

@stefan It's fine, I'm sure running up expensive AI bills is the path to profitability

[ricci@discuss.systems]

@stefan The funny thing about NFT avatars, BTW, is that Bluesky is making exactly the same mistake with DNS-based handles that Twitter made with NFT avatars: pay someone *else* for platform features, and the platform gets no cut.

(Bluesky does seems to have some kind of referral program with a DNS registrar, but it appears to be a very obscure feature that few know about.)

[alienghic@timeloop.cafe]

@stefan

Though haven't we also been having declining active user counts?

Though if everyone's counts are declining maybe people are going outside?

(Just want to clarify the fediverse updates sound quite a bit better than the blue sky updates, I just wasn't sure about the trends in active users)

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@ricci Ah, that is an interesting point, didn't think of it that way!

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@alienghic It started to pick up again recently, might be going down a bit again, though.

(fedidb.com)

Well. Nevertheless!

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@alienghic Not sure if people have been going back to Twitter/X away from both Bluesky/fedi.

Can't really trust their numbers.

Maybe just giving up on social media?

[mackuba@martianbase.net]

@stefan Here's something for you: https://martianbase.net/@mackuba/116309682841704313

[alienghic@timeloop.cafe]

@stefan

I personally think it's more common for people to prefer more closed communities like discord

[alienghic@timeloop.cafe]

@stefan

I think dealing with "the public" can be stressful and I think only some people want to do that.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@mackuba Yes, I've seen statements along these lines in the past, but thanks, appreciate you sharing this.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@alienghic Yes, that makes sense!

[benjaminklein@mastodon.nu]

@stefan the goal of the fediverse doesn't have to be growth, one of the advantages of not being tied to VC funding. I would rather people engaged less here and more in real life, and this place helped with those connections, rather than try to coopt and monetise them.

[vvv@mastodontech.de]

@stefan especially interesting: the daily follows have declined from 8 million a year ago to under 2 million now (a 75% drop). Even with declining user numbers there still could be a lot of user circulation (old ones leaving, new ones signing up), but then the follows would be more stable on higher levels.
Now it looks like they have a declining longtime user base without getting many new ones.

[monkeyben@mastodon.sdf.org]

@stefan

And more cats! Don't forget the cats!

[openrisk@mastodon.social]

@stefan @alienghic anecdotally Instagram and TikTok seem now the main "mainstream" platforms. When somebody is scrolling on a mobile in public it's invariably one of these. I have no personal experience with either, and no objective numbers, so... . But both Bluesky and the fediverse are very political for the "average" person.

[aaronmccollum@fosstodon.org]

@stefan This is a cool site. Looking more closely at the daily metrics over the past year, it seems like it's flattening out. This makes sense, because I think a year+ ago, it was newer and people were still making the move over and trying it out. The growth they had at the start was never going to remain. To echo somewhat the points made in a few other comments here, that's probably a good thing.

[botvolution@mastodon.sdf.org]

@stefan
starter packs is a terrible terrible idea. it leads to follow/follower lists in their tens of thousands to zero purpose.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@botvolution Well they'll be pretty restricted, from what I've read, e.g. you'll only be able to add people to them who you follow, they'll be limited in size, you'll be notified when you get added, with an option to remove yourself, and you can opt out from being added altogether.

You'll probably be able to filter out posts that mention or link to them, I'd imagine. (Eg. filter out posts that contain a portion of the URL, if it includes something like "/collection/").

Seems like you can avoid this feature altogether as if it didn't exist at all.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@aaronmccollum Yes, the chart itself is nothing unusual.

To me, the interesting part is, a year ago they closed a $100 million funding round, which they just recently disclosed. And their numbers have been dropping the whole year.

Can you imagine what we could do with $100 million dollars?