Lengthy rant: Whether it's Mastodon or XMPP or OpenSim, people seem to always pile onto whatever is the biggest instance already due to lack of knowledge
It's always the same with decentralised, federated services: Newbies don't know, much less understand that they're decentralised and federated. And then they pile onto the one instance which they take for the service itself.
The #
TwitterMigration demonstrates it very well. Hundreds of thousands of people take their very first step outside the world of corporate-owned walled gardens which they previously took for everything there is. Apart from #
GAFAM, this included #
Twitter as allegedly the only microblogging service in existence. And like #
Facebook, it's a centralised walled garden. Twitter =
twitter.com. Facebook =
facebook.com. One service, one website. They don't know that it could be different, it's even beyond their imagination.
Then #
ElonMusk bought Twitter. And he made it suck. And people wanted to get away.
Now, for the first time in the history of the Internet, the place where people decided to migrate from a proprietary, corporate, commercial walled garden was not another proprietary, corporate, commercial walled garden. For the first time in the history of the Internet, it was a free, open-source, community-owned, community-operated service. #
Mastodon.
However, most Twitter users didn't learn anything more about Mastodon than the name. And that it allegedly is "something like Twitter without being Twitter." So, much like #
Windows users who try out #
Linux for the first time and expect it to be "Windows without viruses and spyware and NSA, but otherwise the same as Windows," they expected Mastodon to be exactly the same as Twitter, only without Musk, but otherwise the same.
But how to get there? They didn't even have a Web address. So they did what they always do in such a situation: They googled it. (Because if you've spent your life in a bubble that only consists of Windows, macOS, iOS, vendor-issued Android, Facebook, Twitter etc., you also believe that #
Google is the only search engine in existence. And the only map provider. And probably the only e-mail provider.)
This is where the problems start. The first hit on Google is not
the official Mastodon website.
Nope, the first hit is
mastodon.social. This isn't the official website. It's the Mastodon instance operated by the Mastodon creator.
(As an exception of the rule that everyone always piles onto the biggest instance, mastodon.social isn't even the biggest. The rather questionable and therefore largely defederated Japanese instance Pawoo is the biggest one.)But people don't know that. People don't know this isn't the official website. They don't know joinmastodon.org because they can't be bothered to scroll down if the first link looks promising enough.
And they don't know about instances. Again: They believe that Mastodon is just like Twitter in every regard except Elon Musk. And Twitter is a monolithic walled garden. So they believe Mastodon is a monolithic walled garden, too, without questioning that even one second. And therefore, they except the official website to be the
only website, to also be the place where you can register an account and start right away.
So you've got six-digit numbers of people who first pile onto mastodon.social because they don't know any better, then they start tooting and following, and
then they may eventually learn that Mastodon has a thing called "instances" which means basically thousands of big and small Twitters which are connected with one another, just like e-mail servers are connected with one another.
Unless they're first driven away by mastodon.social's lack of responsiveness because it's completely and utterly overloaded by newbies who take it for the entirety of Mastodon. In this case, to them, it isn't that one instance that's laggy. It's Mastodon as a whole that's laggy. Again, they still believe that mastodon.social
is Mastodon. And so Mastodon sucks, and they're back in the birdcage. They quit before they learn the very basics which would have made their life on Mastodon much more comfortable.
But there are also those few who
do know that Mastodon has instances. Lots of them. But they can't decide which one to join. Having a choice is overwhelming, especially if you've never had one before. Even helpers like
instances.social are of no use for them. So they say, "Screw it, I'll go where everyone is!"
Same reason why everyone and their dog has a #
Gmail account. Same reason why everyone buys either an #
iPhone or a #
SamsungGalaxy. Same reason why most Linux newbies install #
LinuxMint first. Or #
Ubuntu. Or whatever is the most popular distro du jour. Same reasons why the VW Golf has been the most popular car in Germany, and the Ford F-150 has been the most popular "car" in the USA for decades. It's what everyone uses.
You can see this phenomenon all over the place. #
XMPP for example.
Jabber.org is by far the biggest server. It's also the most bare-bone one to have enough power for its many users. It actually eventually had to close new registrations because was and still is full. Why? See above. Especially when XMPP was still commonly known as #
Jabber. Some people took jabber.org for Jabber itself. Others couldn't decide and went where everyone was.
Which leads us to #
VirtualWorlds and thus to #
OpenSimulator. Technically speaking, it isn't a virtual world. Technically speaking, it isn't even a virtual world service. It's only a server application for virtual worlds. But still. And #
OpenSim has always had that one dominant #
grid.
Now, unlike Mastodon, you don't stumble upon the one dominant grid via Google. In fact, Google will probably not directly lead you to any one grid. Instead, the first hit is
the official website. Which is a wiki. One that focuses more on developer and admin documentation than on end-user documentation, especially as the landing page is maintained by OpenSim developers from a developer's point of view. In other words, it doesn't look like logging into that page will get you in-world.
No, you're more likely to get into OpenSim via some third-party service, be it Second Life, be it a news site or a blog or something. It isn't actually easy for complete newbies to get into OpenSim, and they may end up installing the Windows version of the server application on their PC and trying to get into the world without knowing that they've installed
the world itself instead of an application with which to use it.
Those who manage to get into OpenSim have inevitably stumbled upon at least one grid being mentioned somewhere. And that tends to be the dominant grid.
Back in the 2010s, the one dominant grid was surprisingly a closed one, i.e. one that wasn't connected to the #
Hypergrid. That was InWorldz. Granted, InWorldz' advantage was the best possible refuge for #
SecondLife converts, for it was the closest to "Second Life without being Second Life" by being commercial with its own marketplace and not bothering its residents with stuff they weren't used to such as the Hypergrid. And InWorldz actually marketed itself as an independent stand-alone instead of one of many OpenSim grids.
Since InWorldz' untimely end, however, #
OSgrid has taken the lead. Not only is it much much bigger than whatever is the second-biggest grid at some point, but
OSgrid alone is even bigger than Second Life in landmass. Now, I wouldn't say it's the best grid out there. It has its problems. It's still rather experimental and bleeding-edge and actually a testbed for new code. It isn't the most newbie-friendly either; other grids are better in this regard. And if you want your own land on OSgrid, you have to know a thing or two about server administration and setting up a vanilla OpenSim grid or alternatively rent a webserver because you have to host your land yourself and then attach it. OSgrid doesn't offer sim rentals.
But being the biggest grid and the one with the biggest population, it's also the most likely to be mentioned. Unless a grid list is ordered alphabetically, it tends to be on top like on
opensimulator.org's own grid list (regardless of it being very outdated). It doesn't help that non-commercial OSgrid tries to present itself as a stand-alone virtual world rather than one out of many OpenSim-based grids on the Hypergrid, something that even the commercial grid
Kitely doesn't do, at least not nearly to such an extent. Thus, it sometimes actually appears to outsiders as if OSgrid = OpenSim. Or rather, OpenSim is the platform, but OSgrid is
the grid. Newbies may be led to believe this.
That being said, in the case of OpenSim and OSgrid, the "almost all newbies pile onto the biggest instance" effect seems to be rather mild for various reasons:
- Many newbies come into OpenSim through personal recommendations or invitations from OpenSim users whom they know. These users usually recommend the grid on which they have their main avatar. On the other hand, this contributes to the effect because it's so likely to be invited by an OSgrid resident.
- Due to its size, OSgrid doesn't have its own one tight-knit community. Instead, it's rather heterogenous. It's therefore extremely unlikely to join or be drawn into grid-to-grid drama which makes it neutral ground. Of course, this makes it tempting to recommend OSgrid to newbies, but it's the very same reason why OSgrid is rather popular for creating spare alts which may make up a great deal of new registrations.
- For Second Life refugees, Kitely is more attractive because it's more like Second Life: Not only is it commercial with its own currency whereas OSgrid doesn't even have Gloebit, but there's also the Kitely Market which is very similar to the Second Life Marketplace. Also, unlike OSgrid, Kitely offers sim rentals which makes having your own land a whole lot easier. So I dare say that Kitely is at least as likely to be recommended by Second Life residents to Second Life residents as OSgrid, if not even more likely.
- And then there are other grids, Hypergrid-enabled ones even, which pose as stand-alone walled gardens to try and attract new residents who have never heard of OpenSim by piggybacking on the #metaverse hype. Whether or not these grids are trustworthy, however, is another story and shall be told another time.
Still, wherever newbies end up, I guess many of them believe their new virtual home is a one-of-a-kind walled garden, and it takes them a while to find out about the Hypergrid and the existence of more than this one grid.
Nonetheless, OSgrid not only remains the largest grid by far and the one with the biggest population by far, but also the fastest-growing one, attracting lots of actually new users. If it didn't refuse to offer land rentals, I guess it would have run into similar problems as mastodon.social right now or jabber.org back in the day.
