@Gargron I should log out and log back on occasionally :)

@Gargron Also, plenty of people signed up on more than one account and may only now be settling into the account they stay with.

It's still tremendous growth.

@Gargron I've seen a number of new people sign up and drop off after a few days. They may want to just check it out, consider options, wait for more critical mass. Trying to think back to my Twitter experience circa 2011, when only a small fraction of my friends were there, and it wasn't a hub for public activity and news.

@Gargron well, while competitors are falling, especially Twitter and Reddit.

@Gargron is it accurate to even call it a service

@Gargron seems all the cool people are staying anyway... So their loss. 😂

@Gargron @Gargron I have never actually felt so enriched by a social media service as I do with Mastodon. I am immunocompromised with LongCovid, so this *matters*. Thank you. <3

@Gargron So if you never log out, do you stop being counted as an active user at some point? Or do other actions influence this count as well?

@Gargron posts and comments are still up.

@Gargron

In the past I've signed up to, for example, #amazon and #spotify just to have a look around. Never bought or listened to a thing.

@Gargron As long the „big media players“ start to join #Mastodon soon, i don‘t think this is an actual problem…

@Gargron
It's only numbers
Quality counts!

@Gargron

I first signed up in 2018 but only made the leap recently

@Gargron Imho, showing follows on other servers would be a big boost to value and retention. Difficulty of discovery, building list of accounts to follow has really limited my use.

@Gargron if you haven't logged in in a while, because of a cookie or only using apps with cached credentials, do you still count?

@Gargron it’s possible via the public non-auth API to find out when a user did a last action/status
Via that you can find it out in an accuracy of one day

@Gargron 👇🏻

@Gargron yes that makes sense. Thanks for the confirmation

@Gargron

Twitter is engaging in a malign influence campaign describing this common phenomenon as a sign that Mastodon isn't a success.

Federated social media is far superior.

On Twitter the number of mute/blocks required to manage bots, trolls, sock puppets, bigots & fascists per day was a huge waste of time. You spent more time on that activity than actually reading or writing tweets.

Curating followers who were coat tailing or functioned to launch mobbings or brigading was tedious too.

@Gargron it'll be interesting to see what happens when the scheduled big changes happen over at the bird site soon. Word counts in the thousands is a big change.

@Gargron Oh no, are the numbers coming down? The shareholders will be furious 😜😎

(I'll keep up my support on Patreon :)

@Gargron this will harm #Mastodon’s IPO. 🙃

@Gargron From my perspective, as a birdsite blow-in, it is the experience on Mastodon that is prime, I give not a toss for "numbers" and enjoy sharing ideas within a federated system far more than I ever did on Muskies Parler.
People will come and go, and, most likely, the good ones will stay.
#Mastodon

@Gargron is there a service out there that has 100% retention on new sign ups?

The answer to this riddle is- “Time”

@Gargron

I just finished a 7-day #BirdSite poll for just my 20k followers.

0.02% voted. The other 99.98% didn't bother.

'Engaged users' is a much more interesting metric than 'sign-ups' (though harder to measure). 🙂

#Mastodon #Users #Engagement #SocialMedia

@Gargron This just needs to keep on being what it is. It's a smooth experience. It suits some people more than others. "Horses for courses", as the saying goes.

@Gargron I do think if the mastodon clients (web/ios) fetched replies from OPs instance by default when going to view toot details/replies, or at least had an in-line one click prompt/way to do so, it would help a lot with people seeing how busy fedi actually is, and they might find it more engaging.

@Gargron Took me about two weeks to reap the benefits. I constantly followed people, then I learned hashtags, then conversations. Every day a new enhancing way of using it (app, browser with many columns etc). Now I look forward to opening it first thing in the morning!

@Gargron how does this work with the api? With the explosion of iOS apps being developed I wouldn’t be surprised if a few folks are api-only users

@Gargron

In any event, we all can do much more to recognize, welcome, and otherwise engage new users to help them acquire the taste and stay...

@Gargron I am truly thankful that there is an alternative to the bird.I I do not want to support a platform that promotes fascism and hate as well as using facts( be it good or not) the truth must be told !
Thanks for mastodon. Keep up the good work and not bowing down to the forces that be!!

@Gargron
To me, the most important thing is maintaining an alternative to #corporate #socialmedia which is what #mastodon does ♡

@Gargron i think the point is that influx of users didn't have as many people inviting their friends successfully (which would offset the churn).

@Gargron

Numbers aren't everything.
Interction is.

And in comparison to "that-site-which-shall-not-be-named" #Mastodon / # The #Fediverse #encourages #Interaction above all else.

@Gargron maybe, the term "active user" isn't in the right place here?
I would expect for "active", actions like boost, retoot etc. and not a logon, that one have to do once an app is setting up.

@Gargron Das Folgen ist einfach zu kompliziert wegen den verschiedenen Servern. Könnt ihr die Benutzer nicht auf alle Server verteilen? Auf anderen servern ohne Passwort. Nur damit man folgen kann ohne das man die Domain seines Mastodon Servers eintragen muss. Das ist viel zu kompliziert.

@Gargron it is unfortunate but mastodon is not a beast that can handle the monster twitter, a twitter replacement is still needed. mastodon is just an alternative, not a replacement.

@Gargron

And if I'm. Always logged in???

@Gargron no one expects 100%... But if Mastodon focused more on building (and rebuilding) a healthy graph early in the user lifecycle (e.g. first step after signup), churning users would be < signups and this would be a growth story. External tools like Movetodon help, but the tried and true model is 1) mobile address book matches for strong connections, and 2) a much improved (and centered in the UX) recommendation API for weak ones.

@Gargron if we don't see twice as many users the next day the platform is DEAD

@Gargron give new feature to increase new users.

@Gargron yup. Retention rate looks pretty pretty good to me

@Gargron I’m hopeful that another reason is that the would be trolls can’t feed well here so they move back to other platforms that can fill their insatiable hunger for hate.

@Gargron Would users naturally migrating to other instances not influence that too? So multiple 'new users' with the original wind up becoming 'inactive' as the user migrated?

@Gargron @Snipgan Also, it’s not a competition! Users are not “customers” here, so their number is fairly irrelevant. So far, I’ve been enjoying the “uncluttered” experience that Mastodon can offer 🤘

@Gargron

What's Mastadon's retention rate?

@Gargron It's the quality that counts not the quantity.

@Gargron absolutely. The narrative about users fleeing is foolish.

https://initialcharge.net/2023/01/mastodon-active-user-number-narrative/