Gregory's ServerI had reasonable expectations about peerverse.space. Maybe I'd eventually federate, have a few interactions. I wasn't being overly modest -- a lot of stuff I make on social media is just *there* -- nobody sees it.
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 Obviously, I'm not just excited because my posts were visible. This graph shows the daily posts to my @pixelfed instance over the past 7 days. I'm now publishing hundreds a day! Last I checked, 175 instances are federated with peerverse.space. 515 photos have been uploaded. 2.7k posts were made. Once again, this is on a @pixelfed instance that's 2 weeks old. The success of my @pixelfed instance has had a big impact on my personal profile hosted on peerverse.instance. In 2 weeks, I have 35 followers. https://peerverse.space/atomicpoet Engagements and interactions through peerverse.space have been impressive. Multiple times per hour, people like, comment, or follow my personal profile. How are people discovering my personal profile? I've been cross-posting to my personal Twitter and Mastodon accounts. That's the only kind of cross promotion I've been doing. https://twitter.com/atomicpoet/status/1515893254486695936 What surprised me: I thought people on Twitter would prefer photos that are self-hosted through the service, and that Mastodon users wouldn't trust new instances. That proved to be a small barrier to my new @pixelfed instance. To be blunt, I'm receiving about the SAME level of interaction on a new profile on a new @pixelfed instance comparative to what I had with my 5 year old Instagram account when it was active. That's what surprised me. Obviously, it helps that my Twitter and Mastodon accounts are several years old, so that helps establish a level of trust with my new @pixelfed instance. Maybe I wouldn't have had the same success if I started anonymously. It also helps that I have a blog hosted on a subdomain associated with the @pixelfed instance (blog.peerverse.space). That establishes what my intentions are, and what I'm trying to do -- so that likewise establishes trust. The other thing is, I make darn sure interaction is two way. With everyone who interacts with me on peerverse.space, I try to acknowledge them in some way. What does my @pixelfed instance prove? You don't need a centralized social network to build a social media presence. Anyone can start a new instance on the Fediverse and start interacting with people. The impact can be immediate. With @pixelfed, the ActivityPub protocol, and the Fediverse at large, that's enough to build a decent social media audience. It's no longer just possible, it's doable. Most important learning from starting a @pixelfed instance: decentralized social networks can be as effective as centralized social networks when it comes to building interactions. Pixelfed is as good as Instagram 😮 |
Immediately after I started my @pixelfed instance, I published my first post. As soon as it was public, somebody followed my profile and liked my status update. At once, all expectations were met! https://peerverse.space/p/atomicpoet/416841723405996035