Now witness the power of this fully operational Fediverse!
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Now witness the power of this fully operational Fediverse!
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/now-witness-the-power-of-this-fully-operational-fediverse/
How can you measure the popularity of a social network site? Perhaps by counting the number of active accounts, or the quality of the discourse, or even how many people reply to your witty memes.
Me? I prefer to look at how many people visit my blog from each site. It is an imperfect measure - and a vain one - but lets me know where I should be spending my time. No point posting on a network which is just bots talking to each other, right?
Earlier this year I built a stats-counter for my blog. Every time someone clicks from a website which links to my blog, it records that visit in a database. I get to see which blog posts are doing numbers, and where those numbers came from.
Until fairly recently, the Mastodon social network didn't send referer details. I thought that reduced the visibility of the network and lobbied for it to change. As various Mastodon servers upgrade, and admins opt-in, it is becoming more apparent just how much traffic originates from the Fediverse.
Over the last few weeks, here's how many people have clicked from BlueSky and Mastodon to one of my blog posts.
Total Source 1,607 bsky.app
752 mastodon.social
At first glance, it doesn't look good for our elephantine friends, does it? The butterfly sends over twice the traffic. Game over!
But, of course, while Mastodon.social is the biggest instance - it is far from the only one. What happens if we slide down the long tail? Here's all the Mastodon-ish instances which sent me over 10 clicks.
Total Source 193 phanpy.social
120 android-app://org.joinmastodon.android/
106 infosec.exchange
62 mas.to
59 mstdn.social
55 social.vivaldi.net
49 wandering.shop
48 fosstodon.org
33 mathstodon.xyz
27 mastodon.online
26 mastodon.scot
24 app.wafrn.net
19 indieweb.social
18 social.lol
17 tech.lgbt
17 toot.wales
16 en.osm.town
16 feditrends.com
14 mstdn.ca
14 piefed.social
12 wetdry.world
11 c.im
11 mastodon.nl
51 Ah! Add them all up and you get a grand total of 1,773 visitors from Mastodon-powered sites. That's more than BlueSky.
Now, there are some obvious caveats to the data:
- I have a smaller follower count on BlueSky than I do on Mastodon.
- My posts may appeal more to one demographic than another.
- People may have strict privacy controls which suppress the true volume of visitors.
- There's no way to measure how long someone spends reading my posts.
- RSS and newsletter visitors aren't counted.
- Clicks from apps may not always show a referer.
- Some people may be on multiple services.
- Fediverse users can follow the post directly, so don't need to visit the site to read it.
And yet… no matter how you slice it, Fediverse servers are sending as much traffic as BlueSky!
I think this is brilliant. Web services should be able to scale from small to big - and each ActivityPub-powered site helps power the open Internet.
Just for completeness, this is how Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Lemmy do over the same period:
If you add up all the Lemmy instances, they send about as much traffic as Facebook and LinkedIn combined. That's not a huge surprise - those platforms hate anyone clicking away to the wider web.
Twitter is basically the Dead Internet. I'm no longer on there, but I do occasionally search it to see who is sharing my posts. The popular posts I write get shared a lot - sometimes by accounts with huge followers - yet there are no comments or retweets and barely and clicks.
I don't do Instagram or Threads, and that might be reflected in their low numbers. But I'm not active on YouTube either - yet people there occasionally link back to me.
Final Thoughts
Firstly, my stats only represent my site. Your site might be very different.
Secondly, I've ignored search engine traffic, big blogs, newsletters, and other sources.
Thirdly, and most importantly, this isn't a competition! The desire for a "winner-takes-all" service is dangerous and disturbing. An ecosystem is at its most vibrant when there are multiple participants each thriving in their own niche.
I want a thousand sites, running a hundred different software stacks, some of which only serve a dozen people, or even a lone participant.
Diversity is strength.
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undefined emanuelecariati@varese.social shared this topic
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@dansup promoting something do not make you arrogant
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ActivityPub doesn't need task forces to build onboarding resources.
It just takes one person and a bit of courage.
For both developers and the public.
https://fediverse.info - for the public
activitypub.social - for devs (coming soon)
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Hot take: Your ActivityPub project is invisible.
I got TechCrunch coverage for Loops with literally just a signup form because I wouldn't shut up about it.
Ship in public. Make noise. Be annoying if you have to.
Stop being humble. Start being loud. Your project deserves attention but you have to demand it.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/25/the-fediverse-is-getting-its-own-tiktok-competitor-called-loops/
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I don't think it takes billions to build a platform but it does seem that it usually requires millions to get more than a few people using it.
I have accounts on loops, lemmy/piefed, mastodon, element and more. I've never met a person IRL that uses them and I've never gotten to know anyone in an online community (gaming, interest forums, etc.) that use them. Viewing my loops app makes me feel like I'm alone on an island. The communities I follow on Lemmy/Piefed will go weeks without a post. The communities I manage will go the same without a submission from the community. Now that my immediate family have grown tired of the bugs on element after I forced them to use it to chat with me, I am literally the only person I know on the messaging platform.
I love open source but if I were the type of person that required a true sense of a well-rounded social community, I would use something like tiktok to scratch that itch.
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They want you to think building platforms like TikTok requires billions in VC funding.
Reality: Laravel, Vue, federation, and a vision beyond profit.
@loops is my middle finger to tech gatekeepers who said only monopolies can build this.
High school dropout + open source + refusing to compromise = your federated TikTok.
The tools were always free. They just didn't want you to know.
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@Edent those are interesting numbers. Thank you for sharing them!
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🆕 blog! “Now witness the power of this fully operational Fediverse!”
How can you measure the popularity of a social network site? Perhaps by counting the number of active accounts, or the quality of the discourse, or even how many people reply to your witty memes.
Me? I prefer to look at how many people visit my blog…
👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/now-witness-the-power-of-this-fully-operational-fediverse/
⸻
#ActivityPub #BlueSky #fediverse #mastodon #statistics
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Now witness the power of this fully operational Fediverse!
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/now-witness-the-power-of-this-fully-operational-fediverse/
How can you measure the popularity of a social network site? Perhaps by counting the number of active accounts, or the quality of the discourse, or even how many people reply to your witty memes.
Me? I prefer to look at how many people visit my blog from each site. It is an imperfect measure - and a vain one - but lets me know where I should be spending my time. No point posting on a network which is just bots talking to each other, right?
Earlier this year I built a stats-counter for my blog. Every time someone clicks from a website which links to my blog, it records that visit in a database. I get to see which blog posts are doing numbers, and where those numbers came from.
Until fairly recently, the Mastodon social network didn't send referer details. I thought that reduced the visibility of the network and lobbied for it to change. As various Mastodon servers upgrade, and admins opt-in, it is becoming more apparent just how much traffic originates from the Fediverse.
Over the last few weeks, here's how many people have clicked from BlueSky and Mastodon to one of my blog posts.
TotalSource1,607At first glance, it doesn't look good for our elephantine friends, does it? The butterfly sends over twice the traffic. Game over!
But, of course, while Mastodon.social is the biggest instance - it is far from the only one. What happens if we slide down the long tail? Here's all the Mastodon-ish instances which sent me over 10 clicks.
TotalSource193Ah! Add them all up and you get a grand total of 1,773 visitors from Mastodon-powered sites. That's more than BlueSky.
Now, there are some obvious caveats to the data:
I have a smaller follower count on BlueSky than I do on Mastodon.My posts may appeal more to one demographic than another.People may have strict privacy controls which suppress the true volume of visitors.There's no way to measure how long someone spends reading my posts.RSS and newsletter visitors aren't counted.Clicks from apps may not always show a referer.Some people may be on multiple services.Fediverse users can follow the post directly, so don't need to visit the site to read it.And yet… no matter how you slice it, Fediverse servers are sending as much traffic as BlueSky!
I think this is brilliant. Web services should be able to scale from small to big - and each ActivityPub-powered site helps power the open Internet.
Just for completeness, this is how Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Lemmy do over the same period:
TotalSource1,158reddit.com585
facebook.com76
https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/56
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/52
youtube.com41
t.co38
linkedin.com27
android-app://io.syncapps.lemmy_sync/27
lemmy.ca17
lemmy.dbzer0.com14
feddit.org11
discuss.tchncs.de10
l.instagram.com8
lemmy.blahaj.zone6
reddthat.com
If you add up all the Lemmy instances, they send about as much traffic as Facebook and LinkedIn combined. That's not a huge surprise - those platforms hate anyone clicking away to the wider web.
Twitter is basically the Dead Internet. I'm no longer on there, but I do occasionally search it to see who is sharing my posts. The popular posts I write get shared a lot - sometimes by accounts with huge followers - yet there are no comments or retweets and barely and clicks.
I don't do Instagram or Threads, and that might be reflected in their low numbers. But I'm not active on YouTube either - yet people there occasionally link back to me.
Final ThoughtsFirstly, my stats only represent my site. Your site might be very different.
Secondly, I've ignored search engine traffic, big blogs, newsletters, and other sources.
Thirdly, and most importantly, this isn't a competition! The desire for a "winner-takes-all" service is dangerous and disturbing. An ecosystem is at its most vibrant when there are multiple participants each thriving in their own niche.
I want a thousand sites, running a hundred different software stacks, some of which only serve a dozen people, or even a lone participant.
Diversity is strength.
