I am trying to address the issues of why people may not adopt your products in terms of Fediverse social networks and distributed messengers. Fediverse includes Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed and the others. Distributed messengers includes XMPP, Matrix, Jami and the others. This article is about alternative world where there is a technology society who wants to change people from using Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp to using their hoped alternatives such as Friendica, PeerTube, and XMPP. When you read this, please keep in mind end-users not developers, not technology experts either. This is my personal opinion I write without citing any reference but you can consider it further with your own common senses and experiences.
Time
People adopt something which existed earlier than the later. Time matters. This is why more people use Gmail than today’s newly created alternatives because Gmail predates them all. This is also why people adopted Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube because these three predate all today’s Fediverse. This is also why people adopted WhatsApp, because it was the first messenger to replace paid SMS and telephone call with gratis VoIP and instant messaging. Now we have good alternatives namely Mastodon and Movim, but they were too late to come so people may not adopt them because of this sole issue. Seeing from other perspective, we know that XMPP predates all messengers today but why it failed? Even IRC is adopted more than XMPP. For that question, you can consider following points.
People
People want to meet people they want or need to meet. People do not want to meet other people they do not want or need. Positively, this means people who used Facebook may not find their own family, friends, local society existed at Friendica so they choose not to join. Negatively, this means people who used Twitter may find their strongly not wanted people (enemy, hate, detest, block, contrary) existed at Mastodon so they choose to leave. We cannot force people to something they do not want. In practice, these mean for non-English language people they might do not want to join Fediverse simply because people in their language do not exist at Fediverse while at the same time at Facebook or Twitter those people existed. Because social network means social place, it always depends on the people, whether the people as environment is good or not for the end-users.
Services
People do not want to join something that does not allow them to join. Firstly, people use Google Services because they are visible and available for long time to them while people may not use the alternatives because those are not visible and give worries that anytime could be discontinued. Secondly, registration closed services mean bad impressions to new users who WANT that service as most end-users do not try once again. Both Fediverse and Distributed Messengers are all about services to end-users so once they judge the service is bad they will not join in the first place or leave when they already a part of.
Seeing from another point of view, from service provider’s, it is not that easy to maintain a social network! Not that easy either to maintain a Messenger! Please stop assuming that maintaining Facebook for its maintainer is easy, it is not. Taking care about too many things like blocking problematic people, filtering spams, and listening to users’ complains requires times, money, and different persons to do different jobs. For Fediverses, one among other challenges is blocking fellow Fediverses which are unwanted. For example, for a PeerTube instance maintainer, their job is not only constantly keeping away unwanted registered users, but also blocking unwanted other PeerTube instances and that burden may leads to PeerTube service shutdown and eventually leads to end-users leaving the service.
Extra Works
People do not want to adopt something that burdens its user extra works. People want social and telecommunication, not doing extra works. You like it or not, adopting the alternatives mean mostly extra works for end-users. For example, for people who got their business running via WhatsApp, changing it to XMPP means real extra works for those people as they must change other people to XMPP in order to continue business. Second example, for teachers who engaged their education school via YouTube, it is real extra works for them to change it to YouTube.
NOTE: of course this would be double extra burdens if you push every of end-users to build their own Fediverse or Distributed Messenger service.
Technical Difficulties
People want something easy to use to them. People will naturally disapprove or leave anything that is not easy or difficult to use to them. For example, people will naturally find difficult to use today’s Element rather than Movim. Second example, as most people use phone number for their professional as well as family lines, providing non-phone number telecommunication may rather be difficult for them to adopt as they must change their habits. Third example, look at the names. Name matters. Name of software, name of service, name of domain, name of every feature, all matter. In general, our friends understand this well and resulting in successful examples such as Mastodon, PeerTube, Movim and Element. The not successful ones? Look at XMPP names, name of XMPP itself, name of programs, name of service domains, name of every feature. To end-users, such names may mean “do not use me!” rather than “come one, use me!”. Easy names allow people to advertise easily your products on television, radio, flyer, brochure, book, school and university, and also words of government as well as influential people. That is why all successful non-Fediverse non-Distributed alternatives got fluent to spell, simple and easy names such as YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Signal as well As Telegram. We cannot blame them being adopted because of names they chose, but perhaps we should assess ourselves for choosing difficult names for ourselves.
Point of Views Conflict
People do not like conflicts of point of views. If what is visible to end-users from Fediverse is mostly unacceptable to them, those people may like not to use Fediverse. For example, Mastodon in general conveys some Western cultures and opinions which to Eastern people those are not acceptable and this issue may results in failing adoption for vast Eastern people. Second example, if there is anti-commercial point of view in Fediverse or Distributed Messengers visible to people, people will not use one. All people need to commerce, to make money, to trade their something with something owned by the others. Many of them use Facebook for commercial activities like selling their products or services to local groups. If they view they could not do that on Fediverse, or if Distributed Messengers hinder them to, they will naturally stay away from one. Third example, don’t forget that there are many people who do not use computer at all or not use either social media or instant messenger at all too with or without reason. We should respect theirs too, as to them we may sound forcing to use something they absolutely do not want to. Real example of those are people who decided to not use Facebook anymore thus decided also absolutely not to use anything similar.
Luck
People want something where their luck mostly found. People always tend to adopt whichever something that is lucky enough or luckier among its competitors. People do not want something where they found bad luck with. Let’s be honest, what is the factor of XMPP adoption fail? It’s luck. Why Facebook got success while Myspace and Friendster failed? Once again, it’s luck. Why WhatsApp got adopted while BlackBerry Messenger failed? Luck, perhaps because at that time its earlier users advertised it to their friends whenever users of other messengers did not. Luck includes gratis advertising by words of governments, mass media, television celebrities, perhaps successful unfair advertisement and such things. We just need to see how lucky Element, Mastodon and the others.
Education
People who are educated under a choice will be users of that choice. Likewise, if your school and university mandate you to use WhatsApp and Google Meet, you will use those, and only know those, not Movim and Jitsi Meet. Education in real life includes television, radio, newspapers, flyers, even movies and musics, and words of governments and influential people. That’s why WhatsApp adopted, because in all these education lines, people read/hear its name. Did they ever hear XMPP from television? Likewise also, if there is no public education where people are educated under Fediverse or Distributed Messenger choice, there will be no social change, not much changes, I think we can do to this world. The best result we can get more of less is we can only change our own community, internally, but might failed to change the real society, externally.
Regulation
People who are regulated under a choice will be a user of that choice. If your government use WhatsApp, if even police open their call line via WhatsApp, you will be forced to be WhatsApp users too. Likewise, if your office and instance use Slack, you will be forced to be Slack users too. Likewise also for Facebook and the others. If there is no regulation where all government workers should use XMPP, for example, there is not much impact we could get to make XMPP adopted more. Likewise the other ones.
Competitors
Competitors will disallow people to switch to Fediverse or Distributed Messengers. Why? Because they are competitors. Who? Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft and the likes. Let’s not forget that YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Skype and Gmail are owned by those competitors and that Slack, Zoom are just like them. Let’s also not forget that internally, Fediverses and Free Software Messengers are also competing each others. You are easy to find people debating each others to adopt between Mastodon and Pleroma or between Telegram and Element. Imagine when an end-user want to register to Mastodon then somebody says “no, join other Fediverse instead!” and anybody else may repeats such battle. These all are issues that may stop / disallow people adopting one.
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