It seems like it should be sort of a priority for the fediverse to create a high quality alternative to Facebook, which is one of the largest platforms out there, and probably what a lot of people think of when they think of “social media”, and yet, the marketing and overall adoption of Friendica is simply abysmal, to put it bluntly.

Issue 1: The super bland and basic on-boarding.

When you visit the main website for friendica, you are greeted with “friendica: a decentralized social media network” followed by a “try it” button. Then when you scroll down, there is basic black text on a white background, explaining things like decentralization, privacy, and interoperability. Do you think that this sort of intro is really going to draw people in? It gives off the vibe of “it is your birthday”, a la dwight from the office.

If you click on the “try it” button, you get scrolled to a part of the site that says “Try Friendica” with two sentences that basically say “this website is really complex overall, but don’t worry, you can click another button below to browse a list of servers (yes, servers, we are not explaining what that means, just click the button)”. The actual server list has a single filter option, language, and if you filter by english, the top server right now is a furry server. If any normie has somehow managed to get this far, they are sure to nope the fuck out at this point.

Assuming you do manage to get past this point, the actual sign up form has way too much information for the average person. The first field is “openID”. I’m sure that’s useful for those who use it, but why is it the first field? There is also a check box to be added to the public directory, which is checked no by default. What does this mean? It is certainly not explained here. You’re not asking for a password? Why not? Oh, because you are making a random password for me I have to copy and paste and then save or change. That’s not inconvenient at all. Yet another step of friction for me.

Compare this on-boarding process to other sites on the fediverse. Mastodon has a catchy and succinct explainer on why their site is worth joining followed by a “join mastodon.social” button, or a “pick another server” button. If you go to the servers button, you get several different filtering options, region, interest, sign up process, legal structure, and very notably, a disclaimer that all of these servers have signed a safety agreement. Upon signing up, you first agree to some terms of service, which is very reassuring for those looking for a safe and welcoming platform, followed by entering username, e-mail, password and date of birth. All very straight forward. Lemmy is similarly streamlined and polished, and you don’t even need an e-mail to sign up for some servers. Super easy and convenient.

Issue 2: Terrible mascot.

Mastodon has their mastodon carrying a knapsack. Lemmy has the lemming face. Pixelfed has a cute red panda. Friendica has…some kind of demented looking rabbit with bugged out eyes? Seriously, what the hell is this?

Issue 3: Super basic blog style website.

As alluded to in issue 1, the website is super basic, with almost no polish to it. It looks like someone made it on wordpress. The home page does have some clip art type images and background stuff thrown in here and there, but outside of that, it looks very unprofessional. Again, comparing to sites like Mastodon and Lemmy, which have much more polished and professional looking web design. The clearly put time into making sure new users get a good impression. Friendica puts almost no effort whatsoever.

So these three issues, just from an outsiders glance, are in my opinion some of the biggest things holding back what could potentially be one of the most used sites on the fediverse, at least on the marketing side of things. I do not know how the overall team behind the site is structured, but suffice to say, it needs work.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dkEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    Don’t want to shout too much about this yet as it’s still super early but I am actually working on a new fediverse app that I plan should be covering the same sort of use cases as Lemmy, Mastodon and Friendica, all in one application. With a big focus on user friendliness, easy onboarding and such.

    It’s still super early but drop me a private message if you’re interested in helping or just hearing more.

    • InformaPirata@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      Hi, I’d be interested in learning more about your project to create a new Fediverse software.

      I want to be honest: I don’t have much faith in the success of your project and I’ll explain why.

      1. very successful projects like Mastodon show great difficulty in improving, because they were born to be too simple, set up to do minimal microblogging, and then grew together with their user base;
      2. very long-lived projects like Friendica, have had even more difficulty in improving because they were born to be very complex,
      3. projects that have had a great marketing push like Pixelfed, continue to be (in my opinion) very modest;
      4. forumverse (or threadverse) projects like Lemmy have received the main damage precisely from the incompatibility wanted by Mastodon against them;
      5. new very interesting projects like Bonfire (the only software together with Friendica and Hubzilla to manage the “circles”) are being developed with difficulty and are made up of many modules and above all do not have a decent app.
      6. a brilliant developer like the one who created Kbin has created a wonderful software, but due to the enormous success it had all the Kbin instances went haywire, he was unable to keep up with the support requests and disappeared forever from circulation after a month of burnout
      7. even the best software in the Fediverse is useless if there is no smartphone app and not all the software in the Fediverse can be managed with an app

      Finally, the impression I had is that even among the most famous developers of the Fediverse there is a bit of ignorance about Activitypub, about other platforms and about how other developers have solved the same problems; also it seems that the “Masters of the Fediverse” are always in a bad mood and have less and less desire to learn new things (a praiseworthy exception is Matthias Pfefferle).

      Creating a federated software is therefore not a very simple thing neither technically nor psychologically, but if you feel capable of doing it, perhaps it could be advisable to test yourself a bit:

      • developing some web utilities, some plugins or less ambitious projects
      • actively contributing to other existing projects (Friendica? Bonfire?)
      • getting familiar with both the Mastodon API (which is an industry standard) and with the development and definition of APIs in general: when someone wants to write an app for your software, they will look at your code and in two minutes they will decide if it is worth doing!

      Of course I didn’t tell you these things to depress you, but only to point out some things that are often not foreseen: in reality I hope that your idea can become a fantastic project!

      Good luck!

    • Pilferjinx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      If you’re not creating it to push propaganda I’d be willing to donate to a project like that.

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dkEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Propaganda is definitely not on the list of planned features, haha :)

        Appreciate the sentiment, I hope it will one day be worthy of donations :)