Last couple of months has been dramatic and there is a huge demand for ethical and safe social media. Even mainstream conservatives start to look for alternatives when US oligarchs wage hybrid warfare against their nation.
And there are so many low hanging fruits right now. Like Facebook event and marketplace replacements on the fediverse. Or just a Facebook alternative that isn’t Frendica. Or maybe a commercial fork of Frendica.
I’m not involved in any development of fediverse software, so I’m asking here. Do you experience more interest from venture capital?
Also, I assume EU will pour big money into social media alternatives, starting 2025.
Note: I’m not interested in a discussion regarding if VC is good or bad for the fediverse. That’s a good topic for another post though.
Instead of writing the same answer to all sceptics, I’ll just write one answer here:
I believe that you greatly overestimate the rationality of VC at a micro level and greatly underestimate the number of business cases that can be made on top of popular open standards. Developing a fediverse software like Pixelfed is basically free if you’re with the big money. The question is if it will hurt your other investments and strategy. Right now it looks like the answer is “no”. The risk of putting too many eggs in the oligarch basket seems quite high.
Is it not possible to make money of the internet because you don’t own the infrastructure and the standards are open?
You have good ideas on the topic, very intriguing. I have a unique idea in the works that would parallel this and involves the fediverse, I’ll share it soon :-)