Mammoth App shared an interesting stat today. The Fediverse has gained over 1.5 million new users in the past thirty days. This is a 13.8% increase for December. That is incredible, but it's not what's interesting.
Over the same period, the Fediverse gained just 0.2% Monthly Active Users (MAU).
How is this possible?
Not to age myself, but I remember pitching Facebook ads to the CEO as a way to reach new audiences. That year, I increased Net Operating Income (NOI) by many Schrute Bucks. Sneak-brag aside, I've been in digital marketing for a long time.
If I showed these stats to my hypothetical boss, they'd probably be curious about the MAU stat. Why is that so low compared to sign-ups?
There are a few potential answers I'd provide:
- Our criteria for counting a Monthly Active User might be too stringent. Is it one post, like, or share for the month? Or is the benchmark higher?
- Lots of people are signing up and then immediately leaving. This would be no bueno, as they say.
- There's a bot invasion, and they're waiting to strike. Wait, what the fuck— my boss. Is there bad news on the way, and someone wants to win the war of public opinion? I would have to dig deeper.
For the first scenario, I don't know how MAU is counted. There's nothing on fedidb.org that defines the metric (that I can find).
The second scenario is for sure possible. Mastodon has had issues with retention in the past. For October, November, and December 2022, the Fediverse saw a 53% increase in User Grow1. That same period saw a 5% decrease in Monthly Active Users. What?
As an addendum to scenario number 3, there could be a side quest, too.
This is pure speculation (all of it is 😀), but I saw a few posts this month that felt like bad improv. Each post under the threads hashtag feed said the same thing— oh, gee, I signed up for Mastodon, but after three posts I decided Threads was better 🤷.
So the question is— why would anyone want Mastodians to believe that new sign-ups are taking the midnight train to Georgia? Beats me. Honestly. Seems like a question for a political strategist and not a lowly social media analyst. But these stats don't pass the smell test for me. Or did I forget to take a shower again?
Anyway, here's the screenshot from Mammoth app's account. I assume they got this stat from fedidb.org. But I couldn't find a view that showed the Total Users stat near the Fediverse User Growth chart. The page I see has Total Servers and Monthly Active Users in between the two.
And hey, I hate to be the downer here. I want the Fediverse to grow and remain strong. I very much like it on my chosen servers, and I want to stay on ActivityPub platforms for many years to come.
But the math is not, how you say, Mathing.
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Stats from fedidb.org ↩
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