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. 

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

hard to see that being a sustainable growth strategy

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

tipping bots were all over reddit in the early days. twitter also has lots of annoying subcultures that we probably don't even know about

the problem is that it's hard to get away from when the network is small

while i don't like the financialization that is present on farcaster today, i don't think that it's the reason why farcaster doesn't have millions of users. farcaster never pandered to people looking to leave twitter and has barely done any growth hacking + is not free + the network would not have been able to handle an influx of millions of users

i do think it needs to drop crypto as a marketing term and stick to building useful social legos that make sense with the technology doing the heavy lifting in the background. the reality is that the mainstream doesn't care whether your app is onchain or not - they just want something that works and is easy to use

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.