I’m an advocate for privacy, and anti-censorship(not that I’m a political person, but I personally think that one entity controlling everything could make somewhat of a rat box society), I’m confident that the fediverse platforms would one day be large enough to compete with popular sites like Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, etc. (given enough time for the website design/attractiveness, and user-friendliness, features, etc. to mature. )
But I feel like we won’t be achieving that reality anytime soon. at least in my speculations. if you look at the statistics, mastodon is 100x smaller than twitter, and also the fediverse gained almost 25% more users (which is just under a million) which is great but not enough. some viral impact, or a bigger influence is needed to get that number up.
TL;DR, the question; Is there some good ideas, marketing ideas, or anything conventional or non-conventional, that could help us gain more users?
Open to anything, as long as It’s possible to do, look outside the box, creative answers are very welcome.
some of the ideas so far;
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[Dev Project] a Fediverse Game Store, with payment features, etc.
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[Dev Project] Fediverse Forums Platform
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[Dev project] making a fediverse search engine
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[Dev project] ActivityPub Compliant Wordpress (as the First CMS target)
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[bot] a meme bot for giving user points for reposting fediverse memes.
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[fediverse feature request] Option to make watermarked image to crosspost.
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[Community] Fediverse Youtube channel for fediverse related content. (Creator Awards, News, Podcast, and shoutouts to fediverse creators)
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[Community] our own meme boards (is there something we can use that’s similar to 4chan?)
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[Community] A page for lists of things that people can do to promote the fediverse
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[Community] A page for a detailed-comparison of Fediverse platforms and Corporate platforms, to serve as a guide to the developers of Fediverse. more info
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[Microblogging] user experience related Improvements, etc. see thread
Tags; [Community] [Dev Project] [Bot] [feature request] …
edit: I’m going to start a community organization based on this… if you have ideas for the name of our community, please post it here; https://lemmy.ml/post/56996
Thank you all for your input, I’ll try to summarize what we just discussed later, also thank you for participating in this discussion, I’ll have some of the ideas put into motion in the near future.
please continue posting your ideas here if you have some, maybe something useful can come up for the community to use
Focus local, not global. Get your friends, family and other locals to join the fediverse. Make it relevant in your community. Comprehend why your peers benefit from the fediverse and create rhetorics that can convince them. Make the process of giving it a shot as easy as possible. Dont trust that they are going to figure it out themselves. People might like the idea of the fediverse, but they have a life to deal with as well.
my goal isn’t to make people I know use the fediverse, It’s the opposite. and It’s going to be pretty hard for people to convince those to use the fediverse. since everyone is used to using the same old stuff.
I disagree on focusing locally, I’ll respect your opinion though.
If you dont believe that everyday people can be convinced, then you should also forfeit the idea that it can become mainstream.
I do still believe that people can be convinced, in fact I did succeed on making people use the matrix to talk to me. It’s a solution if you want specifically people around you to use the fediverse. but not focusing globally is still a mistake. since globally people have more creative ways to promote the fediverse
I want to agree with @libre_warrior@lemmy.ml, but also I think that there is no right or wrong. What works works.
Convincing friends & family only works to a degree. Some people I wouldn’t even try to talk about stuff like this, let them come to you if they ever want to know about software freedom or privacy, they already know that you care. But some people will be perfect on the fediverse or on a nextcloud instance, lemmy whatever. Not all of these at once.
Then wait a year or so and more people in your periphery will suddenly ask about stuff etc, because they see that the other “not so much into technology” people like it.
To get “global attention”, open-source projects need the difficult stuff that are hard to get and get right as a project, like a really good UI, more convenience than the opposition etc.
This is right on — trying to directly advocate or persuade users doesn’t seem a great approach at this point in time, but putting information out there in a way that is easy to find and clearly outlines some benefits may allow more to adopt on their own terms.
On another hand, if Thomas Friedman or Oprah or Elon started publishing on an activitypub instance, perhaps a whatsapp style migration could happen, but I don’t think (and somewhat hope) the fediverse is suited for a public who has come expecting the benefits of centralised mass sensationalism when they’ll find something that requires a little effort to enjoy.
Like you said, let them come. If they ever want to know more about what they’ve heard in the more global, less preachy campaign they will know what is available.
If big names join the fediverse. they ask for ways of identity verification to protect themselves from identity theft.
I in one hand like the idea of the fediverse becoming mainstream. but I don’t want to submit official docs, phone numbers and biometrics just to have a social profile.
For me it’s a have your cake and eat it too … I would love to have communities of knowledgeable people who can answer questions and provide high quality information, but for them to have the reach they want it might require a big peanut gallery which is not something desirable imo.
yeah, it really depends on what you want as your goal. anything that could increase more users is fine.