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.
Are there numbers to back this up? I remember Pidgin being a contender to replace AIM for a time.
Oh I fucking member Pidgin.
Remember Trillium? Xbox Connect?
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.