So given the post-election swell of BlueSky and Threads…and a far more modest but existent swell of new users to the Fediverse, it feels like the battle to be a non-X/Twitter microblogging solution is coming into view. Threads and BlueSky, each seeing a recent momentum of over 1 milliion users per day are the clear top two.

Notable that both Theads and Bluesky are built with the open social web, and decentralized open tech features are either inherently part of both, or soon will be. ActivtyPub for Threads, ATproto for BlueSky.

So I am thankful that this is not a battle between closed and open, but that all the major competiors in this space are all open.

So in one way it is a “format war” like VHS/Beta and for now Threads/Mastodon/etc are on one side, BlueSky on the other. But I actually think and hope that ATProto and Activitypub build out more and more interoperability, so it all becomes like open email: and no-one much cares if it is pop3 protocol or imap protocol and eventually it all just works as one big “open social web.” And things like BridgyFed are the eariest signs of that.

A big note: Threads and Bluesky’s massive success of late and Mastodon’s modest success does not make Mastodon and other fediverse/activitypub offerings losers. In this case it isn’t zero-sum. Fully open, patent free, non-commercial offerings like Mastodon, etc, have different needs and lifecycles and futures not tied to VC’s or shareholders. Where BlueSky will have it’s own financial expectations to it’s investors, Mastodon is - as Nilay Patel said - “definitionally unkillable.”

And the Mastodon and non-Threads fediverse itself has also seen steady growth, in total users at 11 million, good server growth, active monthly users inching upward and currently just over 1 million. For me, Mastodon never needed to “win” but rather be big enough and robust enough to keep everyone else honest and then keep growing over longer timescales.

But it does paint a picture where the landscape will likely emerge over the next year. Sometime later I’ll look back at my 2024 predictions - that I think I got some right, some very optimistic and off. I think there are too many moving pieces to predict 2025 other than that Threads and BlueSky emerge as the main commercial heirs to what the old Twitter was.

How it plays beyond that will hinge on a few variables including:

I do think it will matter deeply as to how and when Threads fully turns on two-way federation into ActivityPub. Do other major services join supprting ActivtyPub? Or ATProto?

I do think it could make a big diffeerence if BlueSky folks choose to allow BridgyFed to be opt-out on their side, fostering more users interoperating with the ActivtyPub side of the Open Social Web.

I think it will matter at how quickly Mastodon continues to sand off its rough edges.

The most common negative critique I see of Mastodon by those who reject it is that it is the “Linux for Desktop” of social. I get that. But it needs to evolve quickly into becoming what ChomeOS is to the Chromebook laptops - which also runs a version of Linux and has grown to a healthy share of users. It has that in it: just look at Phanpy.social to see what I still find a superior Fediverse UX than any of the social platforms.

I think it will matter if orgs like IFTAS, and Social Web Foundation are well funded and both help the Fediverse evolve in safer and more robust functionality.

I hope that Mastodon itself leans into a more plugable architecture: enabling alternative UX to plug in, allowing alternative services to plug in and offer other functionality across servers. That could enable faster evolution of key parts of Matodon while also allowing the core product to evolve at its own pace.

I hope that BlueSky finds keeps evolving it’s own unique ways, it also finds ways to lean into interoperablity over the next year, even in small ways like supprting 500 character messages that are easier to bridge, suppritng rel=me for verification, and finding supprting BridgyFed evoltution.

In a way I am more optimistic than ever at the open social web. It is an exciting time to be in this space, and am thankful for the communities I have on Mastodon as my main open social web home, but also on the BlueSky and Threads accounts I also inhabit.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.