https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Looks like Pixelfed’s growth spurt is slowing down. Absent any new external stimuli I’m guessing it’ll stabilize around 200K to 300K monthly active users – over a hundredfold order of magnitude from what it was just a month ago.
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You are very optimistic about the user retention 😅
People might stay there more than on Lemmy. Pixelfed seems in a better shape than how Lemmy was during summer 2023, with the constant DDoS on Lemmy.world and the language bugs preventing comments…
I think you’re on to something.
I also think there’s a difference in where the network effect kicks in for different types of social media. IMHO, Lemmy has just enough activity to not feel empty, and even then I wish there was more comments to interact with and more niche communities. With Pixelfed, I feel like as long as there’s enough interesting posts it makes sense for people to visit regularly.
You’re 100% right about that. I’ve never ran out of nice posts to look at on Pixelfed. I think the medium & format is a lot less addictive and a lot more relaxing/positive, which might help to explain it.
It depends. I don’t feel forced to go on there because it has none of my friends. Obviously I’ll go once every few weeks to check out cool photography but I’m really not an active user there.
user retention
yeah, hard to tell… Lemmy peaked a little under 70k MAUs and is around 45k now… if pixelfed peaks at 300k it’s reasonable to think it levels at 200k (i.e. a hundredfold increase from a month ago).
ofc every situation is different… e.g. pixelfed has tighter Mastodon integration (pro) but may depend more on a network effect (con). also iirc the lemmy MAU count methodology shifted at some point, from post/comment to post/comment/upvote/downvote which is a confound for the lemmy dropoff count…
Dans actions will decide user retention, I think.
What goes up must come down
Other events will cause additional spikes for Pixelfed, Mastodon and others. Unless the US Oligarchs are going to stop supporting Trump’s bat shit crazy policies they will keep pushing group after group off of their platforms.
It will be easier for the next wave to join as their is already content and already people they know and many issues addressed.
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Is it like an alt to instagram?
Yes a fediverse version of Instagram. It relies on the activity pub protocol under the hood. Which makes it possible for example to follow like and comment to a pixelfed account from a mastodon account if you have one.
I haven’t been posting as much as I was initially. That might be it.
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I’ve installed it and looked around, I don’t get it. It’s random people’s pictures.
Well, it is a photo sharing platform.
Pixelfed is definitely a good example of “its what you make it”.
Try searching for and following some hashtags that you’re interested in. I have an awesome home feed made up of art, design and photography hashtags and artists.
This is usually where these apps stop for me.
I genuinely don’t care about what other people have to share.
It seems odd that you’re here on a social media site then.
Seems pretty close to Instagram
Sounds like instagram or imgur?
The old Instagram before they added the video stuff. Pretty much a 1:1 clone of that I was told (I was never on Instagram so 🤷).
Insta
That’s exactly me as well. Tried it, looked at random people’s cats and dogs. Not for me.
That’s exactly me as well. Tried it, looked at random people’s cats and dogs. Not for me.
I think that’s kind of the challange we’ve got with regards to making social media from a nerds perspective. We’re a bunch of nerds that don’t understand the appeal of the things we want to make alternatives to, and wouldn’t be interested in using them even if they weren’t run by horrible evil tech corporations.
It has gotten really, really good for photography. There’s a bunch of incredible photographers posting their stuff on the Fediverse these days, and they enjoy the appeal of it that it’s closer to what Instagram was before it became an influencer hub.
As for random cats and dogs, I guess some people enjoy that as well.
that’s because you’re supposed to follow people you want to see. you know, social media.
I’m out of the loop, what happened in January to cause that sudden growth?
I have an account but I’m not active. Just not much of a social media guy in general.
Long and short… Pretty much all the big tech heads sat in the front at trumps innaugeration, including Zuck. Shortly afterwards there were a bunch of coincidental “bugs” of things like, all results being hidden when searching for democrats and LGBT, and people being set to follow trump.
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Do you think saying women can’t think for themselves is “hate speech”?
I feel insane that no one has commented this yet??? The data clearly only starts in November. At minimum this is our second plateau and I seem to recall more that have happened lmao.
Excellent point, do you happen to know where I can find longer-term usage data?
I couldn’t find anything :( oddly, fediverse.observer actually was logging data before that time but it’s only accessible to me via wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20241010192709/https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
@diasporg@mas.to any reason fediverse.observer is limited to only a few months? (no clue if this cross-platform ping will work but giving it a shot)
The fediverse has had a very low retention rate. My bet is that after a year MAU will come down to 60k. That is if meta doesn’t embroil itself in another controversy.
Idk, Lemmy also inreased it’s userbase by a factor of 30, mainly from a single event. It had like 1,500 MAU before summer 2023 and now we’re at 45k. So I’m not sure what to make of this. I kinda agree though, it’ll stabilize at a lower number than during a hype period. And Pixelfed aside, the more popular places on the Fediverse seem to be stagnating right now. I hope we’ve learned from the past and drama that happened and we don’t need to repeat the same things.
the more popular places on the Fediverse seem to be stagnating right now
Dunno, from Fediverse Observer, it looks like lemmy and mastodon are growing slowly over the last couple weeks. (the mastodon stats look a little weird tho – there’s a plummet on Jan 30th that looks like a data collection artifact.)
There has definitely been an uptick in sign-ups - first around the Inauguration (despite being a UK instance) and then with Reddit’s pornmaggedon. In between it didn’t drop back down to the old rate in between. db0 have seen a.massive spike recently too.
Though, I’d argue if we were awesome and had something truly nice to offer, we’d grow on our own. And not just if someone else messes up and becomes unbearable. But it’s complicated.
The retention is bad because the new user experience is abysmal. It takes a lot of effort, even for a tech savvy user to get Lemmy & Mastodon to a usable state. Most people are not going to do that and will churn out when there’s no interesting content and the app does weird things like shows you the same posts over and over, if you don’t manually change settings for things like “hide read posts” in Voyager.
I can get about one user at a time, if I sit with them and explain it. The Fediverse is essentially the scene in Silicon Valley when Richard sits down with the focus group to explain to them for 3 hours how his software works. It’s really cool. It should be the way forward, but the masses have no idea how this works and don’t care to. They want a button to install. They want to search for their friend and find them immediately. I haven’t found any fediverse software that can just do that much, let alone everything else that’s expected.
Lemmy and mastodon have been very usable for me.
Peertube and friendica on the other hand…
By the way @Sergio@slrpnk.net not sure if you’ve seen it but there is also !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com now!
o yeah thanks!
Yeah I try my best but have yet to convert anyone. Was already weird as a redditor previously.
Was already weird as a redditor previously.
lmao, so true lol. It especially didn’t help when I used to show my friends the most traumatizing posts of /r/shitposting. Now they don’t trust Lemmy.
That’s how Reddit was in the beginning.
Back then, you used to show someone “the front page of the internet” and it would literally be jailbait and tech news.
Support JPEG XL or HEIC/HEIF and I will join ;)
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/3102
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/749
here’s your issue trackers.
I must say though, this seems like a strange feature to draw the line on, is it really that important to you what image format is used?
Not for me but I can see how it would be for some people joining a platform focusing on image content.
Yes. JPEG is limited to 8-bit (which works well with rec.709/sRGB) and modern displays and cameras capture much more than that (typically 14).
sRGB has a very limited color gamut, and using a wider/HDR color profile (eg rec.2020) with only 8-bit per subpixel would result in colour banding.
I don’t want to limit my photo development with poor color definition.
Thanks for the links (I’m already subscribed).
I was under the impression that Jpeg XL was written out of modern browsers due to Google pushing their image format instead or are you talking specific support with in Pixelfed app?
Sadly yes. It’s included by default in Apple devices and there are talks to bring it back with a Rust implementations. I think Google walked back a bit from their standard setting bullying practice with the antitrust lawsuits / threats of getting broken up. No idea if that will continue with the Musk administration.
(This is a serious question)
Are Pixelfed communities generally accepting of cannabis related content, or is that seen as a no go on most servers/connections made with an account?
I recently started using Instagram again here and there because of cannabis related communities and such, which they seem rather relaxed with at the moment (just to connect with folks), and a transition could start for me granted there is an opportunity for sensible cannabis communities to exist - I’m a medical user and it has to be a part of my life due to the required usage for my conditions, I hope this is understandable.Regardless of if the answer to my query isn’t favourable to me, I hope this platform expands and continues to gather a larger userbase.
To me it is MAU that is more interesting. And this doesn’t stabilise if people stop using it.
On the other hand, the Kickstarter campaign should be an interesting push. It should improve retention.
