The "Good news" was in reference to your hubby's return, the remainder was me griping about my inadequate setup. #Federation is great, but it does require instance admins to keep their software up-to-date (mine is still at StatusNet 1.1.0+security). So it's entirely my own fault that I needed to hunt all over your site for the conversation thread.
@heluecht @rysiek @forteller I agree that Identi.ca was far too central in the #fediverse back then. There were actually hundreds of other SN servers, but the overwhelming majority of users were on Identi.ca and never had any need to understand what made the network different ( #federation ) or the need to spread out to reduce Evan's operatng costs or contribute to his revenue.
I believe it is still the largest Pump by number of users, though the fact that most public instances are still operated by Evan (who has no time for the Pump network right now) is a far bigger problem for that network.
@denjin @gargron Also give GNU and these guys (@mmn @hannes2peer) your money to make GNU Social a better implementation. The more the merrier :) #federation
@spaceman Personally, I was really excited about #Twitter, so I tried several similar projects like Plurk, Jaiku, Identica. Over time, I came to understand #federation and this network became my primary online focus.
Based on what he said at the time, he felt that it was too difficult to evolve #OStatus's component specs (mostly designed & controlled by Google) once Google decided that #federation and interoperability in the social space was no longer desirable (coincides with the launch of #GPlus). On top of that, his company was losing money (at one point, it was ad-supported, but users rebelled against the most lucrative ad provider, Google), and most SN users relied upon him for zero-price hosting.
@clacke et al More accurately, #Pump.io was created to require fewer resources than #StatusNet. Very successful at that. #Federation is there, but still requires workarounds, so I'm not sure it improved.
ps: If you'd like to share this on your server, just copy and paste the link, because I'm blocked (and my whole node is blocked) on several of the other servers. THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW IT'S A SUCCESS!
a big Thank You for all the people in the Federation especially those who made, contributed to, or helped someone in any way with Redmatrix, Hubzilla, Friendica, Diaspora, Pump.io, GNUsocial and all involved with anything that shares the visions of open federation and user freedom
and to all the users too - for spreading the word and giving it a go and helping the networks grow!
I find !GNUsocial successful because it works for me. Having tech-oriented conversations actually makes GNUsocial more successful for me than #Twitter -- compare the hashtag #LaTeX on the two services and see the difference. And there are plenty of non-tech topics on other GNUsocial instances, see http://rainbowdash.net/ for example. Also, I don't see GNUsocial being any more complicated to use than Twitter. Using the WebUI on GNUsocial insulates the average user from the technical specifications of #Federation. True, people running their own instance need a bit more technical know-how. But at the GNUsocial demo at the #Linux conference yesterday someone said that the Federation and scalability was nice, but she was *really* impressed that a full microblogging site could be set up in half an hour. GNUsocial is different from Twitter, and so its success is measured differently too.
We were almost 10 I think ;) But this was in parallell with the #ShareableLab event, so we intermixed with those people quite a lot. And in the non-techie sessions they were introduced to why !fs and #federation is important for any sort of organising which has to last over time.