My 2025 Open Social Web Prediction Score Card

A year ago, I made a set of bold predictions about where the Open Social Web was headed. Now, at the end of 2025, it’s time for a sober, if occasionally amused, look at what I got right, what I got wrong, and where I was wildly optimistic. I’m currently working on my 2026 predictions, but before moving forward, I wanted to grade 2025 honestly and in public.

Here were my 2025 predictions: www.timothychambers.net/2024/12/2… And for fun, here were my 2024 predictions: www.timothychambers.net/2023/12/2… So, how did my 2025 Nostradamus cosplay turn out?

THE WINS 🎯 ✅ Fediverse Growth: EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS Predicted: Cross 12 million registered users Actual: ~12.8 million to 16+ million registered users (FediDB, Fediverse Index, December 2025) I undersold this one. The ActivityPub-based Fediverse didn’t just cross 12 million, it pushed past 15 million by early 2025. Monthly active users stayed relatively flat, but that was true across Bluesky as well. Note on Fediverse stats: Tracking a decentralized, opt-in network is messy. Different trackers count different servers.

✅ Ghost 1.0 Fediverse Support: SPOT ON Predicted: Ghost launches 1.0 Fediverse support Actual: ActivityPub beta in March 2025, full Ghost 6.0 release in August 2025 This played out exactly as hoped. Ghost is now a serious player in federated publishing and even open-sourced its ActivityPub middleware. Major kudos to Jon and team.

✅ Migration Waves: DIRECTIONALLY CORRECT Predicted: Waves to Threads, then Bluesky, then Mastodon. Actual: Pretty much exactly this. The waves weren’t enormous, with the exception of Threads, which benefited from Instagram integration. Still, the order and pattern held, especially around major news and election moments.

PARTIAL CREDITS 🟡

🟡 Threads Federation: 60% RIGHT, FUTURE UNCLEAR Predicted: Full two-way federation in 2025, opt-in. Actual: Partial two-way federation, opt-in. Likes and follows are bidirectional. Replies and quote posts are not. Federation remains opt-in, as predicted, but progress has been slow. Recent interviews with Threads leadership describe federation as “maintained” rather than prioritized. Hope that isn’t as bad as it sounds. Score: partial win.

🟡 Ghost as a Top-10 Fediverse Server: CLOSE, NOT YET According to FediDB, Ghost has launched ~13,600 federated blogs, which is extremely impressive. Again according to FediDB, they rank around #21 by total users when sorted by all fediverse software software. This feels likely for 2026.

🟡 BridgyFed Opt-Out: HALF RIGHT Predicted: Bluesky and Threads move toward opt-out

Mastodon enables server-level opt-in or opt-out Actual: Mastodon server-level opt-in launched (Sept 2024) Individual users on Bluesky and Fediverse still must opt in

I correctly predicted Mastodon’s server-level opt-in, which effectively makes bridging opt-out for users on participating instances. My own instance, indieweb.social, is planning to do this, as did Newsmast. However, individual user opt-out has not arrived on Bluesky or Threads.

The nuance: the technical capability exists and willingness seems present at big platforms, but funding appears to be the gating factor. This is one problem that you can help fix:

Give here: www.patreon.com/ANewSocia…

And buy some merch here, I got the stickers and my standing desk looks all the better for it: store.anew.social

🟡 Bluesky Growth: 80% RIGHT Predicted: 50 million registered users Actual: ~41 million (Dec 2025) I overshot, but directionally correct. Bluesky added ~15 million users instead of the ~25 million I predicted. Engagement did drop after the post-election surge, but growth remains impressive.

🟡 Threads Growth: 67% RIGHT Predicted: 600 million MAU Actual: ~400 million MAU (Aug 2025) I was optimistic, but adding 100 million MAU in a year is nothing to sneeze at. Threads has clearly cemented itself as the dominant post-Twitter microblogging platform and seems focused on pushing toward 1 billion MAU.

🟡 New Non-Microblogging Platform with 50k Users: ABOUT 60% RIGHT

Bonfire and Loops both hit 1.0 with impressive features, but not 50,000 users.. Loops has 35,000 users. Bonfire just under 2,000. So not there. Yet.

🟡 Fediverse MAU Baseline: MIXED / LIKELY HALF WRONG Predicted: MAU would not drop below 1 million Actual: Tracker-dependent FediDB showed MAU dipping below 1 million at points in late 2025, while Fediverse Index often reported just over 1 million. This one lives in Schrödinger’s box. I’ll score it as half-wrong.

🟡 Global South Relevance: DIRECTIONALLY CORRECT Predicted: South America and Africa grow in relevance Actual: Not yet dominant by country stats, but relevance is emerging for both BlueSky and Mastodon. Adoption shows up first through shared and diaspora-run instances, journalist and activist communities, and migration during political stress. This is exactly how influence tends to appear before raw numbers catch up.

THE MISSES ❌

❌ Another Major Platform Joins ActivityPub: FLAT OUT MISS. No top-20 US social platforms joined. I did correctly predict Tumblr would not but that’s WAY too easy. The Alt-Store joined, which is meaningful, but not yet in the top 20. So that’s a miss.

❌ Bluesky MAU Baseline: FULL MISS Predicted: MAU wouldn’t fall below 20 million Actual: Stabilized around ~5 million MAU The spirit was right, Bluesky stabilized, but the numbers were not.

❌ Bridge-Enabled Users: MISS Predicted: ~20% of users bridged between ActivityPub and Bluesky Actual: ~125k–126k bridged accounts Against ~6 million combined MAU, that’s ~2%, or ~4% under generous assumptions. The limiting factor is infrastructure and funding, not interest. (See my earlier note on giving to them)…

❌ No Viable Bluesky Relay Alternatives: HAPPILY WRONG Blacksky successfully launched a fully operational relay and AppView alternative in 2025. This is a miss I’m genuinely glad to have made.

PREDICTIONS STILL AWAITING DATA 📋 These need more verification:

📋 Aggregator apps in the top five Open Social Web clients by downloads

📋 250k+ posts from Lemmy/Mbin/PieFed in 2025

📋 250k+ federated podcast episodes

If anyone has solid data here, please reach out.

FINAL VERDICT 🎓

Overall score: Strong C+ / B- I mostly nailed the macro trends: growth, federation becoming real, and Ghost shipping. Lots of partial credits. My most interesting near-miss was BridgyFed, and I was clearly too optimistic about Threads federation. On to 2026.

What predictions would you make? I promise to grade myself just as honestly next year.