本文作者通过分析其个人社交网络中不同平台的回复数量，对比了Bluesky、Mastodon、Google Plus等平台的发展轨迹。文章以作者自身经历为样本，观察了不同平台在不同时期的用户参与度，并比较了它们与Facebook等平台的差异。文章还探讨了Google Plus早期的高人气和后期衰落，以及LessWrong平台的稳定性，并对Mastodon在作者社区中的表现进行了分析，最后表达了对Bluesky未来发展的期待。

🤔 **作者通过对比不同平台的回复数量，来衡量平台发展情况。**作者选择了Facebook、Google Plus、LessWrong和Mastodon作为对比对象，因为这些平台都有其跨平台发布文章的历史。这种方法提供了一种观察平台用户参与度的简易方式，但也受限于作者自身的影响力和发布频率。

📈 **Google Plus早期曾获得较高人气，但未能维持发展势头。**文章指出，Google Plus在刚推出时，其用户参与度与Facebook不相上下。但是，它并没有保持住初期的高人气，最终逐渐衰落。这说明平台的初期发展并不一定能保证其长期成功。

📉 **Mastodon在作者的社区中并没有取得成功。**Mastodon的发展轨迹与Google Plus类似，但其用户参与度从一开始就比较低。这表明，平台的成功与否，也与目标用户群体和社区氛围息息相关。

🤔 **LessWrong平台则展现出稳定的发展态势。**尽管作者在LessWrong上的发布内容与平台的整体风格有所不同，但其文章仍然获得了一定的关注和讨论。这说明，平台的稳定性和用户粘性，有助于维持平台的长期发展。

🤔 **作者对Bluesky未来的发展充满期待。**文章最后表达了对Bluesky未来发展趋势的期待，希望观察其发展模式。这表明，新兴平台的发展路径和用户接受度，仍然存在许多不确定性。

Published on December 1, 2024 11:50 AM GMT

How does the growth of Bluesky compare to Mastodon in 2022? Whatabout Google Plus in 2011? I can't answer this globally, but (nowthat my comment archive is up to date) I can lookat it for my immediate social network by looking at a proxy: how manyof the replies people write to my posts are on each platform?

Here's the full time period:

I've included Facebook, Google Plus, LessWrong, and Mastodon becausethose are the four platforms where I've ever had an approach ofcrossposting all my posts. [1]

This is somewhat conflated by how much I've been posting, which hasvaried over this time:

You can see the impact of having small children (starting in March2014, February 2016, and June 2021). The spikes in December 2019 andFall 2022 look pretty random; just times when I happened to be writingnearly daily.

Here's comments per post:

With how unpopular and mocked Google Plus had become by its end it canbe hard to remember how popular it was when it got started, at leastin some communities. I started cross-posting to Google Plus in July2011 (firstcrosspost), which is probably right after I joined and three weeksafter it launched.Right from the start it matched Facebook, though it wasn't able tomaintain its momentum. [2]

LessWrong, by contrast, doesn't represent the growth of a newplatform: I was starting to crosspost to something that had beenaround for a decade, though with an intermediate period of stagnation.It's interesting that even though my writing is often pretty differentwhat's typically on the platform my crossposts there still get 40% asmany comments as my ones on Facebook.

Mastodon prettyclearly never took off, at least not in my communities: it follows asimilar trajectory to Google Plus, but without much engagement even atthe beginning.

I'll be curious to see what pattern Bluesky follows!

[1] For example I've cross-posted manythings to the EA Forum, but because this is an intentionalselection of posts it wouldn't be a fair comparison. I've alsoexcluded the LW posts from before I began full crossposting, for thesame reason.

[2] Sometimes people joke that G+ was a social network for Googleemployees, but that's not how it was initially: in the first sixmonths I count 69 unique commenters, of which one worked for Googleand two others (one being me) that later joined. Lots ofnon-programmers, mostly people I went to college with.

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