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;

  • [Dev Project] a Fediverse Game Store, with payment features, etc.

  • [Dev Project] Fediverse Forums Platform

  • [Dev project] making a fediverse search engine

  • [Dev project] ActivityPub Compliant Wordpress (as the First CMS target)

  • [bot] a meme bot for giving user points for reposting fediverse memes.

  • [fediverse feature request] Option to make watermarked image to crosspost.

  • [Community] Fediverse Youtube channel for fediverse related content. (Creator Awards, News, Podcast, and shoutouts to fediverse creators)

  • [Community] our own meme boards (is there something we can use that’s similar to 4chan?)

  • [Community] A page for lists of things that people can do to promote the fediverse

  • [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

  • [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

  • 12•3 years ago

    At the end of the day, you can’t solve socioeconomic and political problems with an app. The monopolization of social media is an inherently political problem, and ultimately the only solutions are political in nature. Centralized platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube wield immense power over the way we communicate, and that power is not something that will be surrendered willingly. One might hope that market forces would spur competition, but the past couple decades of tech industry history has only indicated a tendency towards consolidation. Every “promising” upstart company like YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitch, GitHub etc. ultimately succumbs to the Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon blob.

    Fediverse platforms like Lemmy, Mastodon, Peertube, Matrix, etc. are great technology. They are the future of the Internet - or at least, they deserve to be. The problem is, the technical details of federation and the implications of software licensing tend to get lost on the vast majority of people who aren’t either software engineers or activists. Most people don’t seem to care about privacy as long as they can get their memes and talk to grandma. As a pathological Free Software nerd myself, I’d talk to friends and family about how awful Facebook is for years and they’d literally reply “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

    I’ve been praying for a long time for decentralized, Free Software social media to take off. I remember the snazzy videos and Kickstarter campaign that launched the Diaspora network ten years ago. I was crushed when it made virtually no inroads into the Facebook monopoly.

    The trend as it appears to me is that alternative social media platforms tend to grow the quickest when the monopoly platforms produce exile communities. Mastodon grew to millions of users out of dissatisfaction about the way Twitter was being operated (and then Gab is another story). Platforms like Raddle, Voat, Tildes, Lemmy, Hexbear, and TD.win (ugh) have grown either due to the fact that they were expelled from Reddit, or were so sick of the direction Reddit was heading in they decided to strike it out on their own.

    At the end of the day, software is just a tool. Federated social networking is among the most promising tools in the box because federation appears to be the only plausible mechanism to overcoming the network effect, but it is still just a tool. The adoption of federated social networking platforms will be driven primarily by social forces, and I think the best way for us to promote the use of federated social media is to facilitate this process whenever push comes to shove.

    • GwynneOP
      4•3 years ago

      I get all of what you said, but, I don’t think we should be so pessimistic about it. if things are depressing, instead of accepting it, you should keep moving forward, and let it be the drive to change what shitty reality is given to people like us.

      All it needs is a movement, or a driving force of some passionate people. or even, it would start with just one person, a madman who wants to lead others to an objective that is seemingly close to impossible. It could even be you, I believe anyone with a working brain, even if he’s more dumb than anyone in this world, could be the one who solves the world’s most complicated problem.

      Moreover, there is a few ideas up here that no one on earth has attempted, see the problem? we have too much people not doing anything despite complaining about their problems. less then 1% of us actually make a change.

      Well, to make it seem less impossible to some people. these corporate companies are ran by humans like you and me, they have weaknesses and flaws. if even they can do it then why shouldn’t we?

      one of my favorite quotes;

      “Real change is difficult at the beginning. Without the familiar to rely upon, you may not in as much command as you had once been. When things are not going your way, you will start doubting yourself. Stay positive, keep the faith, and keep moving forward – your breakthrough may be just around the corner.”

      ― Roy T. Bennett

      I suggest that we all keep our heads up, and keep trying, until we get there.