You can see it if you check https://fedidb.org/. Monthly active users have gone from just a hair under one million to somewhere around 1.4 million and still growing. How do we think this will go? How do we feel about this influx of new users? Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?

I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.

  • MysticKetchup@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago
    1. The official Pixelfed app just has a nicer looking UI
    2. There’s not really a competing app for people leaving Insta like there is Bluesky vs Mastodon
    3. Pixelfed’s content is mostly visual so it’s easily digestible to casual users and you don’t have to scroll past dry Fedi arguments
    4. Better discover features so users don’t have to do a bunch of legwork to find who to follow

    Just my guesses though, but like any social media it really depends on if big creators will switch and if users stick with it over time

    • hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      This.

      Discovery and user abstraction are Lemmy’s biggest issues and we are not addressing them to the degree we should.

      I know there’s some stuff on all those centralized platforms that’s way over the top, but most of it is actually pretty helpful. And you’ll miss it once you switch here.

      • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Discovery? Interesting thought.

        I tried out pixelfed and the pixelix app for the past couple weeks.

        The “discovery” page on the official app is worse than useless. It shows almost nobody with over 10 followers, highlighting one person with 50-100 followers, then shows “popular on the fediverse” which are thumbnails of posts of the people it just recommended. It always recommends at least 5 of the same people day after day, week after week, even people you already follow.

        The official app can’t even show a global feed so it is literally impossible to discover new people unless you know their name and specifically search for them, or they are recommended by luck on the discover page (of which there are multiple repeats per day, so not likely)

        Pixelix at least allows you to view a global feed though. Definitely a better experience, but Lemmy discovery is not any worse than that.

  • breakfastmtn@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    So far so good! Some very unscientific observations from spending an absurd amount of time scrolling local on pixelfed.social:

    The people coming from Instagram and TikTok seem way less grumpy than the microbloggers. People are having a lot of fun and not complaining about much. It’s kind of a trip seeing happy, joyful people on the Fediverse to be honest. Everything in the world suuuuuuuucks right now, so it’s felt like a bit of a refuge. Sometimes I’ll accidentally bounce over to the global feed and oh man is the change in tone jarring.

    People don’t seem to have a problem with servers like the Twitter migrants did. Folks are still talking about it a lot on Mastodon though. I’ve literally not seen a single post about Pixelfed being “too complicated” to succeed, whereas it was (and is) pretty common to see “this place is great and all, but…” posts in the microblogging neighbourhood. Not sure why this is but it might be because the people coming to Pixelfed are generally younger than Mastodon users. This is just a guess, but I’d estimate the average age of Mastodon users is maybe mid-40s. Most of the people pouring into Pixelfed appear to be in their mid-to-late-20s. Perhaps those folks are just more accustomed to servers through Discord and gaming? Though people are generally captioning photos and not writing out lists of things they’re unhappy about and they could also just be unaware of servers altogether…

    Pixelfed is easily the most diverse “corner” of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren’t. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.

    I’ve seen a bunch of people on Instagram promoting Feb 1st as “Global Switch Day” so hopefully it’ll keep blowing up.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    The tide lifts all the boats… there is also a noticeable uptick in Lemmy registrations, at least here on our instance.

  • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Pixelfed’s monthly userbase has gone from 15k to almost 300k in the past month. Absolutely massive for the fediverse.

    I’ll probably try it out eventuallyTM

  • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Lemmy is full of bad news, hate and toxicity while pixelfed is full of artists and people sharing cool pictures and their passion. Visiting my pixelfed account from 2023 a few days ago set such a contrast with what I see on lemmy that I started using it regularly. It really felt weird to visit such a wholesome place after using lemmy for a long time. Now I use pixelfed to balance out the bad stuff from lemmy for maintaining my mental health and to appreciate the art which is not common on lemmy.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    It’s nice to see. I’d compare it to back when Lemmy was in the same situation and tens of thousands of users came from Reddit to Lemmy over night.