Relative size comparison of social media platforms (December 2023)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473
Compared against the predominant incumbent social media platforms, the fediverse is very small.
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Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if there was more Fediverse users than listed.
Neither would I - you can browse Lemmy (and mastodon I think) pretty extensively without logging in. I also think we are at the start of a long term transition towards decentralization of media generally.
In terms of content I like Lemmy. I do see how concentrated the user base is - but I don't see it getting smaller - if anything I see it growing slowly but surely. In addition to organic growth, there will probably be events that drive massive migration to the fediverse - like reddit's nonsense but from different or more diverse sources - some media attention or a major celebrity plug and things could get crazy pretty fast. The platform will probably need a lot of extra TLC to scale rapidly if that happens.
When you see the major media companies start to stand up Mastodon instances - which I also think is going to happen eventually - expansion of the fediverse seems all but inevitable. I would be interested to see what that chart looks like in 5, 10 years. There are plenty of ways for the fediverse to grow apart from more lemmy users signing up.
Honestly I think its a fairly healthy size right now. I don't know what the future holds but I know I'm much happier with the size now than I was 2-3 years ago.