There’s been a lot of speculation around what Threads will be and what it means for Mastodon. We’ve put together some of the most common questions and our responses based on what was launched today.
I know we all dream of having all our friends and family on the Fediverse so we can avoid proprietary networks completely. But the Fediverse is not looking for market dominance or profit. The Fediverse is not looking for growth. It is offering a place for freedom. People joining the Fediverse are those looking for freedom. If people are not ready or are not looking for freedom, that’s fine. They have the right to stay on proprietary platforms. We should not force them into the Fediverse. We should not try to include as many people as we can at all cost. We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.
This is incredibly naive. Mastodon/ActivityPub is much more popular than XMPP was lol
760 million total worldwide internet users in 2003, vs 4.7 billion today.
Based on these sources, then, 1.3% of all internet users were using XMPP in 2003, and 0.26% of all internet users in the fediverse in 2023. As a proportion of all users, that makes XMPP roughly 5x more popular back then than ActivityPub is now.
This is incredibly naive. Mastodon/ActivityPub is much more popular than XMPP was lol
Are there numbers to back this up? I remember Pidgin being a contender to replace AIM for a time.
XMPP had nearly 10 million users in 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20071103080257/http://www.xmpp.org/xsf/press/2003-09-22.shtml)) Activitypub has about 12 million users now: https://fediverse.observer/stats
Thanks.
So not too dissimilar in terms of total numbers of users… however considering the growth of the whole internet’s user base…
760 million total worldwide internet users in 2003, vs 4.7 billion today.
Based on these sources, then, 1.3% of all internet users were using XMPP in 2003, and 0.26% of all internet users in the fediverse in 2023. As a proportion of all users, that makes XMPP roughly 5x more popular back then than ActivityPub is now.
Oh I fucking member Pidgin.
Remember Trillium? Xbox Connect?