@fediverse Fediverse user growth jumped to ~50'000'000 users. What happened ?
The FediDB Fediverse User Growth graph shows a significant jump in user count in February. Software distribution is also 81% other, and the biggest server is fediverse.hanbitgaram.com with 39 million users ! What happened ? https://fedidb.org/
I pay for Spotify for 7 years or so now and i'm so sick of all the ads. After every update there seems to be an: oops, sorry, you have ads now. Podcasts are filled with ads. I was just listening to a podcast where they shoved in 3 ads mid-sentence. How long until musicians put ads in their songs. I'm just so sick of it.
Used both (currently on AM but used Deezer thanks to a free trial).
They both have their exclusives and they might do something in relation to, say, a new album launch, but I’ve not had any blatant advertising on either of them. Apple’s Podcast app on iOS is free, if they have an iPhone.
As someone who’s used both, the way federation works on Bluesky/Atproto is very different to how ActivityPub works. It’s very much a backend thing, letting that do the heavy lifting and prevent the user from worrying about it as much as you have to here, rather than trying to make its fediverse a whole experience.
As for Tumblr, there was talk about bringing it to the fediverse and Wordpress themselves have already allowed users of their hosted blog service to opt-in to this, but have not done it for Tumblr. And Threads? Well, there was a pact to fediblock Threads because of its ties to Facebook, so there’s that.
They did mention that they were planning to make Tumblr open-source, which might’ve been why they said that. I could see ActivityPub integration there in that event.
Probably Depeche Mode. I’m a sucker for synthpop and they’re one of the essential acts in that genre. Just Can’t Get Enough is an iconic track and I appreciate how they went for darker songwriting during their career. Never Let Me Down Again is also a great track. They would go on to influence some of my favourite synthpop acts too, namely CHVRCHES.