Bluesky has added another million users this week, bringing the total to over 4 million. By comparison, the ActivityPub-based fediverse has about 10 million users according to FediDB. The situation will change when Threads is added, but if Bluesky keeps growing it’s worth asking how they’ve done it.
@manton in my experience, it's not much more complicated than "it's easier, more attractive, and more fun". Those aren't the only things that matter, but they do matter to millions.
@z428 For your (c), I agree although I think that hurts monthly active users more than initial sign-ups. Of course, it’s not just one thing and a lot of factors contribute.
@anildash Yeah. Mastodon has improved the sign-up process by pointing folks to mastodon.social, but Bluesky is still easier to sign up and discover users. I’m fascinated by the “more fun” too… My Bluesky timeline definitely leans more toward playful, lighthearted.
@manton @anildash I'd very much like us to find a better way to re-connect your social network. I think if the Mastodon app used a privacy-preserving way to check your mobile contacts and see where they are on the fediverse, we'd have a lot better stickiness here. Global people search would also help a lot.
@manton what do you mean how they've done it? People have missed twitter since elon took over. Bsky is almost identical. Where's the confusion
I've really been enjoying using Street Pass, which is obviously not a useful thing for a new user, but serves a kind of different interest point. When I'm casually going along my web browsing, I can find out whether or not a page I visited has an associated Mastodon user to connect with.
