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https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Looks like Pixelfed's growth spurt is slowing down. Absent any new external stimuli I'm guessing it'll stabilize around 200K to 300K monthly active users -- over a hundredfold order of magnitude from what it was just a month ago.
You are very optimistic about the user retention π
People might stay there more than on Lemmy. Pixelfed seems in a better shape than how Lemmy was during summer 2023, with the constant DDoS on Lemmy.world and the language bugs preventing comments...
I think you're on to something.
I also think there's a difference in where the network effect kicks in for different types of social media. IMHO, Lemmy has just enough activity to not feel empty, and even then I wish there was more comments to interact with and more niche communities. With Pixelfed, I feel like as long as there's enough interesting posts it makes sense for people to visit regularly.
You're 100% right about that. I've never ran out of nice posts to look at on Pixelfed. I think the medium & format is a lot less addictive and a lot more relaxing/positive, which might help to explain it.
The Pixelfed app isnβt very good right now compared to instagram was when it wasnβt terrible. Hope that Dan hires an actual UX designer to update the app with his kickstarter money. And that he can integrate loops with it as well.
I've been trying to set it up for 2 weeks now, the docker containers. There are so many backwards decisions, it's pretty clear he doesn't understand docker unfortunately. The entire app could be a snap to set up, but it's such a convoluted setup that it scares a lot of people away. (It pretty much is scripted assuming you will run it on a VM, and a high cost one at that).
The fact that it's built on PHP and Laravel in 2025 says a lot, and the fact that he started Loops this year on the same architecture also says a lot. It just doesn't scale, it's locked to a single host, and he's finding that as the servers are tipping over.
Havenβt tried self hosting Pixelfed. Just mostly been trying it out on the main instance. Iβm really shocked that itβs a mess to deploy with docker if itβs on PHP/Laravel.
I hate PHP these days for dev purposes but I think laravel ought to be able to scale enough to run most Pixelfed instances. Facebook ran PHP when it was much larger than Pixelfed.
I'm not a PHP fan but it scales better than Python or Ruby (Mastodon) does. I think Dan is a cowboy of an engineer, but blaming performance on his stack choice is a bad take.
user retention
yeah, hard to tell.... Lemmy peaked a little under 70k MAUs and is around 45k now... if pixelfed peaks at 300k it's reasonable to think it levels at 200k (i.e. a hundredfold increase from a month ago).
ofc every situation is different... e.g. pixelfed has tighter Mastodon integration (pro) but may depend more on a network effect (con). also iirc the lemmy MAU count methodology shifted at some point, from post/comment to post/comment/upvote/downvote which is a confound for the lemmy dropoff count...
Frankly, whatever secret sauce it is that makes social media popular is also what drives them to be such shit and be so shit for society. I like Lemmy way more than I like Reddit, and even though I have to go back to Reddit from time to time to fill the needs of my niche interests (which can get no traction where there are not mobs of participants in the greater whole) I never ever look at my interactions there and go "I wish Lemmy was more like this."
It's a conundrum.
Preach brother. The reason I love this space is because it is so small. So much better visibility, so much less one-liners and rwddit garbage to sift through to find a real person. (fe I also choose this guys dead wife! Cue laugh track)
I've seen people in multiple conversations under the same post. It feels more alive and personal than seeing Click to show 3456 more comments
I dunno... it's like the difference between a chain restaurant and your favorite local cafe/pub/diner. The chain restaurant has its benefits, but you have the best interactions with your buddies at your local cafe/pub/diner.
Lemmy reminds me of why I liked reddit in the first place. Back in 2010
I havenβt been posting as much as I was initially. That might be it.
Oh its your fault then
The app is still doo doo. I end up just going on Firefox on my phone
Like a lot of fediverse experiences - the initial need to pick a server is deeply problematic for new users.
Why pick one server over the other? How do get I, (pretending) as someone with no idea about the fediverse, get informed about this choice.
If I take a gamble, then I canβt log in using my mastodon account. Then the login fails with others.
I was happy to persevere, my partner not so much.
The thing is that picking a sever is kind of neat but itβs so tech-centric at the moment when it should be community-centric. A quick blurb about the community and their vibe/ideology would go a long way. Maybe a quick preview of some random content? Instead weβre playing a guessing game with a url.
But hey, itβs early days and these things will improve because we can all pitch in to help be the change.
Okay, are you ready for the pain?
First, we go to pixelfed.org, and click on "Servers." We are treated to a page that says "Find the perfect community server. Signing up on an existing server is the easiest way to get started, let us help you find the ideal server to join!" This alludes to creating your own pixelfed server, which the vast majority of users are not going to want to do. We're talking about a public who has been accustomed to downloading an app, opening an account on the app, and having access to all the content in that app. The idea of hosting their own server at this point shouldn't really be an idea we're bringing up here.
We tehn get filters for "sign-up process", because you have to apply for and be approved to some servers, filter by country, and filter by language. I mean, okay. Then we get Server Catagories: All (87) Art (1) General (8) Regional (13) Adult (4) and Uncategorized, (61). I suppose this is more honest than defaulting everyone to "General" but it's also lazier than a dead house cat. When the vast majority of them are categorized as "Uncategorized" it gives me the feeling that the people running this shitmound don't care about it, so I absolutely shouldn't.
Then we get a section called Network Health, which has data that is not pertinent to choosing a server, including total photos shared, total users, active servers, and average users per server. Neat stats I guess, not relevant to choosing a server to sign up on.
The choices of server are a grid of choices that look like this:
The name/URL of the instance is at the top, with an $8 checkmark next to it which is a different glyph from the check marks in the left column talking about all the evil stuff they don't do, so I think we're just used to seeing check marks after names on social media, so we put them there. I can't find one that doesn't have that check mark so it's completely meaningless.
Then we get a cover photo, which 9 times out of 10 is a variant on the Pixelfed logo so here's yet another opportunity to distinguish severs squandered.
Just below that is the name/URL of the server again in a different color, just in case you didn't read it the first time. This is just 100% wasted space.
Below this is the first 80 characters of a description that was almost certainly written to go somewhere else and has been echoed here. Several of them read "Pixelfed is an image sharing platform, an ethical alternative to centr..." Which must be some kind of default text. Many also use an identical cover image to Pixelfed.social, the instance run by the creators, so I'm assuming this is also a placeholder default. The dead cat is at it again. Those that don't use the default boilerplate often have a description that starts with their instance name, for example "Pixelfed.art is a community driven platfrorm designed to showcase and c..." So including the cover image, pixelfed.art's entry contains the string "pixelfed.art" a total of four times, and nearly no other information is conveyed.
Below this is a button that either says "Create Account" in white on bright lilac, or "Apply to Join" in subdued purple on dark purple, which makes the option look greyed out. People will already be unlikely to click there, and the change in shade further discourages people from trying to sign up. I suppose telling you this here in the main directory will prevent "Oh dammit you have to apply to join" but there's just something wrong with making it look greyed out or unselectable.
There's another button that says "More Details," which leads to another very sparse page which shows a large version of the useless and uninformative cover image, information you probably don't care about like the server location and establishment date, and a link that frustratingly says "More Details." We just clicked on that, why do you want me to click it again? When you click it, you don't get more details about the server, it scrolls down to a list of general features of the Pixelfed platform. Marketing cockshit that people's eyes just glance off of because this is where marketing departments put all the lies.
Oh, did I mention when you click on the uppermost of the many copies of the server name, the top one in white, it takes you to the same place that the More Details button does?
This page promises to help you find the perfect server, and then offers virtually no information that would help a newcomer choose gram.social over pixey.org.
I would suggest removing a lot of the redundant details such as the More Details button and the second copy of the instance's name below the cover image. That would free up room for a couple more lines of description for each here on the index page.
Eliminate the Uncategorized category, maybe add a few more like "Arts, Crafts and Photography" "Lifestyles and Activities" "Fashion and beauty" "Casual, Food and Pets". "I want to upload pictures of my cat, which category do I choose?" "I want to promote my paintings. Which category?" "I want to show off my travel pictures."
Add a text search bar so that people could search by keyword.
As this is a list that instance admins have to apply to be on, I would suggest some requirements and/or heavy suggestions for that process:
Do not allow default boilerplate cover images or descriptions. Make them post something. You're an image hosting platform, you should be able to find an image the defines your community. !woodworking@lemmy.ca runs contests with their members to pick theirs, I won it once. Do that.
Strongly suggest against using a variant of the Pixelfed logo unless that variant describes what your instance is about. Like if you have a sports-oriented instance, the Pixelfed speech bubble P logo appearing inside a sports ball is more acceptable than a P with "pixelfed.sports" next to it. Better yet, an action shot of a sportsball player making an exciting sportsball play with maybe a logo in the corner.
Require admins to choose a category, to eliminate "Uncategorized."
For descriptions, provide a style guide that warns against things like mentioning the name of the instance again in the description, and steer away from all the bleeding heart hyphenated marketing wank.
BAD: Example.lol is a community-driven, open-source, cage-free, low-gluten, carbon-offset, high-estrogen, no-pressure, fuel-injected, tax-free, non-mandatory place to share photos.
GOOD: Share photos of your arts and crafts projects with our avid community of painters, woodworkers, blacksmiths, seamstresses and more!
The aim here is to present INFORMATION that can help someone new understand why they should - or should not - sign up for your instance. We're almost perfectly failing to achieve that.
I feel insane that no one has commented this yet??? The data clearly only starts in November. At minimum this is our second plateau and I seem to recall more that have happened lmao.
Excellent point, do you happen to know where I can find longer-term usage data?
I couldn't find anything :( oddly, fediverse.observer actually was logging data before that time but it's only accessible to me via wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20241010192709/https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
@diasporg@mas.to any reason fediverse.observer is limited to only a few months? (no clue if this cross-platform ping will work but giving it a shot)
I've installed it and looked around, I don't get it. It's random people's pictures.
Well, it is a photo sharing platform.
Pixelfed is definitely a good example of "its what you make it".
Try searching for and following some hashtags that you're interested in. I have an awesome home feed made up of art, design and photography hashtags and artists.
Seems pretty close to Instagram
Sounds like instagram or imgur?
The old Instagram before they added the video stuff. Pretty much a 1:1 clone of that I was told (I was never on Instagram so π€·).
I love art so it's very much for me. I can see how it wouldn't seem attractive to people that aren't into that type of stuff though.
That's exactly me as well. Tried it, looked at random people's cats and dogs. Not for me.
It has gotten really, really good for photography. There's a bunch of incredible photographers posting their stuff on the Fediverse these days, and they enjoy the appeal of it that it's closer to what Instagram was before it became an influencer hub.
As for random cats and dogs, I guess some people enjoy that as well.
I'm out of the loop, what happened in January to cause that sudden growth?
I have an account but I'm not active. Just not much of a social media guy in general.
Long and short... Pretty much all the big tech heads sat in the front at trumps innaugeration, including Zuck. Shortly afterwards there were a bunch of coincidental "bugs" of things like, all results being hidden when searching for democrats and LGBT, and people being set to follow trump.
Is it like an alt to instagram?
Yes a fediverse version of Instagram. It relies on the activity pub protocol under the hood. Which makes it possible for example to follow like and comment to a pixelfed account from a mastodon account if you have one.
Other events will cause additional spikes for Pixelfed, Mastodon and others. Unless the US Oligarchs are going to stop supporting Trump's bat shit crazy policies they will keep pushing group after group off of their platforms.
It will be easier for the next wave to join as their is already content and already people they know and many issues addressed.
Good we need to be sustainable not be like other social media.
By the way @Sergio@slrpnk.net not sure if you've seen it but there is also !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com now!
Support JPEG XL or HEIC/HEIF and I will join ;)
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/3102
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/749
here's your issue trackers.
I must say though, this seems like a strange feature to draw the line on, is it really that important to you what image format is used?
Not for me but I can see how it would be for some people joining a platform focusing on image content.
The fediverse has had a very low retention rate. My bet is that after a year MAU will come down to 60k. That is if meta doesn't embroil itself in another controversy.
Idk, Lemmy also inreased it's userbase by a factor of 30, mainly from a single event. It had like 1,500 MAU before summer 2023 and now we're at 45k. So I'm not sure what to make of this. I kinda agree though, it'll stabilize at a lower number than during a hype period. And Pixelfed aside, the more popular places on the Fediverse seem to be stagnating right now. I hope we've learned from the past and drama that happened and we don't need to repeat the same things.
the more popular places on the Fediverse seem to be stagnating right now
Dunno, from Fediverse Observer, it looks like lemmy and mastodon are growing slowly over the last couple weeks. (the mastodon stats look a little weird tho -- there's a plummet on Jan 30th that looks like a data collection artifact.)
There has definitely been an uptick in sign-ups - first around the Inauguration (despite being a UK instance) and then with Reddit's pornmaggedon. In between it didn't drop back down to the old rate in between. db0 have seen a.massive spike recently too.
The retention is bad because the new user experience is abysmal. It takes a lot of effort, even for a tech savvy user to get Lemmy & Mastodon to a usable state. Most people are not going to do that and will churn out when there's no interesting content and the app does weird things like shows you the same posts over and over, if you don't manually change settings for things like "hide read posts" in Voyager.
I can get about one user at a time, if I sit with them and explain it. The Fediverse is essentially the scene in Silicon Valley when Richard sits down with the focus group to explain to them for 3 hours how his software works. It's really cool. It should be the way forward, but the masses have no idea how this works and don't care to. They want a button to install. They want to search for their friend and find them immediately. I haven't found any fediverse software that can just do that much, let alone everything else that's expected.
(This is a serious question)
Are Pixelfed communities generally accepting of cannabis related content, or is that seen as a no go on most servers/connections made with an account?
I recently started using Instagram again here and there because of cannabis related communities and such, which they seem rather relaxed with at the moment (just to connect with folks), and a transition could start for me granted there is an opportunity for sensible cannabis communities to exist - I'm a medical user and it has to be a part of my life due to the required usage for my conditions, I hope this is understandable.
Regardless of if the answer to my query isn't favourable to me, I hope this platform expands and continues to gather a larger userbase.