I joined Mastodon in...either late 2016 or early 2017? And really enjoyed it but couldn't find enough people to follow and not enough people I knew tried it out so I fell off of it. Came back some number of months before the big Twitter exodus so I at least got to see it in its normal calm state before that. I've tried out various fedi platforms since then.
Kinda the same here. Tried it our early, but it was kinda dead so I left. Then Twitter banned me for setting my profile name to Elon Musk, so I gave it another try and there's all kinds of activity now. Really like it.
If Matrix counts as the Fediverse, then Matrix. I set up Matrix to join the postmarketOS server, then mirrored my OpenRGB Discord over to Matrix with a bridge bot. However, due to lack of moderation and an influx of spammers I ended up making that private.
Then I set up a Mastodon account when Twitter started showing signs of failure and have mostly moved to Mastodon though I still occasionally check up on Twitter.
Now I set up a Lemmy account because of Reddit's failings. Ready for the Reddit exodus. At least this time we're moving to something not in the hands of a single corporation that can sell us out like Digg and Reddit did.
Mastodon thanks to the whole Twitter debacle, although I have a hard time knowing if people or entities I follow on twitter are on Mastodon unless I happen to see them mention it. Trying out Lemmy while Reddit is in turmoil, and I’m finding it a better fit to connect to communities. Beginning to get a better understanding of the ‘verse now as a result of knowing about more than one implementation.
@Bicyclejohn My first exposure to the Fediverse was Mastodon in Nov. 2018. After few months I forgot about it, and I returned in 2022 after the takeover of Twitter by Musk. I have to say, that although it motivated me, I was not active in Twitter if was not a necessity of my previous job.
This week I opened my account in #Kbin.
PeerTube. I was getting really sick of Youtube, heard about it and went exploring.
By the way, Matrix, while it is a federated protocol, isn't part of the "Fediverse" (a word for federated software using the ActivityPub protocol [edit: and some others, see reply] , which are aimed towards social media rather than instant messaging)
Mine was Mastodon a few weeks before the Twitter migration while searching for alternative platforms. Came back on the migration after elongated Muskrat takeover. I tried to find anyone who have the same topics as me on Friday after that migration but no one came out.
I came here when I see a post on Masto about Reddit charging their API. I immediately created a community after registering my account.
I forgot about PeerTube about where and when did I found out about it, but I remember when I first registered in a Spanish instance but I felt like it was defederated by most instances so i find another instances and registered on an Singaporean one (same username).
The problem in all of those platforms, all in my case are no one or too little people are there for my topics, but despite those issues ill never leave.
First exposure would probably be identica in 2010. For people getting started, these days I'd suggest less joining a specific platform and more by interest. Books -> bookwyrm , Video -> a Peertube instance, etc.
I started with a Mastodon account about three years ago without having had any active experience with other social media services before. The microblogging design was and still is relatively confusing for me because the content appears in the timeline without context. In addition, Mastodon offers few options for structuring content. It also bothers me that the content of many other Fediverse services is only incompletely displayed there. Now I am very satisfied with Friendica because it offers more functions, federates very well with all the other Fediverse services and allows better structuring of the content and shows the content in the context of the thread. I have only recently discovered Lemmy and I also like the approach that it is topic-centred (and not account-centred) and you can discover topics or communities.
Mastodon around four years ago. Couldn't get into it then (or again more recently when Twitter really started disintegrating), and I think it's because Twitter-style microblogging just feels conceptually broken for me.
Lemmy solves all the problems I had with both Reddit and Mastodon- just need to spread the word for the next couple of months and hit some kind of critical mass with adoption.
Then it was when I implemented Pingback to my weblog so it looks like it was 2005.
Later around 2012, I was involved in the Tent protocol which was an alternative to OStatus and build a client for it. But because how bad their handled their community a year or so later I switched to:
Indieweb where I implemented a set of protocols and markup on my website to be interoperable with other websites which implement the same set of protocols and markup like microformats, micropub, webmention, etc. To this day I still am using my own website as the main publishing platform and automatically cross post every note and picture to Mastodon.
Otherwise I joined Mastodon with my own 1 person instance in 2019. And later PeerTube with my own instance for my family in 2020 and today I joined kbin.social just to test it before I decide if I should set up my own instance or not.
[edit:] I forgot that I set up my own Matrix server in 2020
This was kind of a interesting topic, so I copied it over and extended it with some more steps which I remembered on the way into my blog: https://jeena.net/first-exposure-fediverse
I've tried Mastodon a few times, and that was my first exposure. The first time, which was I don't even remember when, I joined mastodon.social, kinda got lost and never found anyone to follow and ended up just forgetting about it.
The 2nd was in 2020 after cth got banned and I remember someone in the Discord mentioning an instance I thought might be more interesting, so I joined it and it was definitely a better experience but again I just ended up forgetting about it after a while. Also when I came back later to check in on things I found the instance no longer existed.
I joined a third time around this time last year when some of my friends decided to join and I've used it a little more, but it's still pretty on and off, so I think part of the problem is just that I'm not super into the Twitter-like style of things. Having to follow individual people ends up feeling kinda tedious and since almost no one only posts things I find interesting, I end up either following no one or following enough people my feed is largely filled with things that don't interest me.
Aside from Mastodon I haven't really tried any of the others, but Lemmy definitely seems like it works better for me, preferring to follow topics and interests rather than individual people most of the time. I have actually looked at Lemmy before a few times, and liked it, but found it hard to get over the relative lack of activity, so I hope that's changing (and it seems like it might be).
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