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).

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.

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.

I’ve heard of Mastodon around the time Elon bought Twitter, researched it a bit, but I’ve never been a Twitter user so I wasn’t particularly interested. My first real interaction with the Fediverse was 2 days ago when I tried Lemmy :D

Mastodon around a year ago. Hopped around to a few mastodon instances before finding alternatives. Been running multiple fediverse instances since then (and none of them are mastodon)

This is my first exposure Fediverse :D

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.

Way back when Diaspora was first being developed and people were starting to talk about it.

I’ve just come here after the recent decision by Reddit to practically block most 3rd party access to their API.

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)

Probably matrix: I dug a bit into the perotocol and started hosting my own instance. Mastodon followed (but not selfhosted)

Tried lemmy for a bit but didnt like it. Right now i give it another try.

I had known Mastodon for quite some time but never used it until lots of people came over there from Twitter (which I had never used) and then I set up my own instance.

And now I’ve also set up my own Lemmy instance, I am still using Reddit aswell, but I hope Lemmy gets enough activity for it to be actually useful (seems to be on a good path).

(Yes, I don’t mix Mastodon and Lemmy, because Lemmy just works so different from most other ActivityPub software, it would just confuse me.)

Also I have used Matrix for quite a long time now.

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.

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.

@Bicyclejohn I think it was when I first heard about Diaspora*. But back then I just didn’t try it. Just heard about it and I thought that I’d get there at some point. Then I heard about Mastodon way back a few years ago, but I didn’t join because I didn’t (and still don’t) like Twitter. Then I decided to test a Facebook alternative (I was for a long time decided to move away from Zuck’s garden and kept adding personal life milestones for this), and here I am, on Friendica 😁