social

Recently, Bluesky gained over a million new users, bringing the total to over 12M, with DAU hitting an ATH of over 1.5M. This growth likely followed the surge after 𝕏 was banned in Brazil and two key changes on Twitter: allowing blocked users to view posts from public accounts and permitting third-party AI developers to use private user data.

If users are unhappy with these changes, they would typically seek alternatives at the client level. However, since Twitter isn't an open, decentralized protocol, there are no alt-clients, prompting users to turn to perceived decentralized platforms. This shows that the narrative of decentralized platforms providing more control and autonomy still resonates, attracting those seeking greater freedom of speech and privacy protection.

When might those leaving Twitter consider joining Farcaster?

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/18/24273435/bluesky-user-spike-x-tos-ai-changes-blocking

Bluesky just raised $15M in its Series A, totaling $23M with the seed round, and has 13M users. and it still vows to steer clear of crypto to avoid "hyperfinancializing" the platform.

Farcaster has raised $180M with 700K users now. 

Is this comparison fair? we are still early?

crypto-anarchist · onchain social explorer, advisor · spread FC gospel in /chinese community · curate SocialSight.telegram· write 0xluo.xyz · host /luo ·中文 @luo

Avoiding crypto and ‘hyperfinancializing’ is the best thing they did. It’s what allowed them to get 13m users. 

I’ve been saying this for a while. All this shit is a net negative on the space. And we’re nowhere close to go mainstream with this garbage. 

cypherpunk wannabe, engineer working on @frames /open-frames /opencast
https://stephancill.co.za create stories at https://stories.steer.fun

Yeah I’m not a fan of the blue sky crowd or vibe. They have their own problems to figure out. 

I’m just trying to point out that we also have problems we need to work on and improve. Not just tech but culture too.

they got users with the dorsey brand and from people who hate elon musk

hard to see that being a sustainable growth strategy

of course using crypto (introducing tokens) to attract users is not a wise move, what’s more important is the product-market fit itself.

Two things they (bluesky and mastodon / Fediverse) did absolutely right-

- Less financial content. Btw if you wanna more real ppl financial / tip the platform should just support Tron /Bsc (as fc did with Base). Bluesky have huge users in Asia.

- Federated structure. Bluesky don’t wanna web3/blockchain but any node / instance maintainer can fork and add later. No need to do global p2p status- it won’t work. 


The simple fact is we ran way larger community on Mastodon/Fedi since 2019/2020 and I don’t think FC folks learned the lesson and ever approached, hehe. (While nostr/ lens/ bluesky / mastodon have several conversations with us on this; Bsky/mstdn don’t like crypto but they’re learning fast!)


FYI mastodon’s core foundation budget is <1m$ per yr. So much more higher roi and efficiency.