A year ago, I made some bold predictions about where the open social web was headed. Now that we’re at the end of 2025, it’s time for a sober (okay, maybe slightly amused) look at what I got right, what I got wrong, and what I was hilariously optimistic about. Am working on my 2026 predictions but want to get a sober grading of 2025 out of the way first.

Here was my 2025 predictions: www.timothychambers.net/2024/12/2… And for grins, here was my 2024 predictions: www.timothychambers.net/2023/12/2…

So how did I do with 2025’s Nostadamus cosplay?

THE WINS 🎯

✅ Fediverse Growth: EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS Predicted: Cross 12 million regisetrered users Actual: 12.8 million registered users to 16 million users (per FediDB and FediIndex, March 2025) I undersold this one! The ActivityPub-based Fediverse didn’t just cross 12 million—it blew past it to 15 million by March. Color me pleasantly surprised. MAU stayed relatively flat (as did it for BlueSky as well)…. Note on Fediverse stats: Tracking the Fediverse is tricky because it’s decentralized and opt-in. Different trackers (FediDB, fedi.wrm.sr, The Federation, Fediverse Observer) report different numbers based on which servers report to them. FediDB shows 12.8 MM, and Fedi Index shows over 16 million.

✅ Ghost 1.0 Fediverse Support: SPOT ON Predicted: Ghost launches 1.0 version of Fediverse support Actual: Ghost launched ActivityPub beta in March 2025, full Ghost 6.0 in August 2025 This one played out just as I hoped: Ghost is now a major player in federated publishing and has offered back the source code for their ActivityPub middleware. Kudos to Jon and team!

✅ Migration Waves: DIRECTIONALLY CORRECT Predicted: Waves to Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon in that order Actual: Pretty much exactly this. Not huge waves (except to Threads likely in part also driven by IG integration - but each wave did play out as expected, especially to Threads but also to the others, in that order.

THE PARTIAL CREDITS

🟡 Threads Federation: 60% RIGHT - BUT FUTURE UNCLEAR Predicted: Full, two-way Federation in 2025, remains opt-in Actual: Partial two-way federation did hit this year - likes and follows work bidirectionally, but not replies or quote posts- the biggest part of two-way federation still to come; As I thought, federation features for Threads users remains opt-in It’s moving at a glacial pace and recent interviews with new head of Threads described Fediverse support as being “maintained” but not prioritized. Hope that is better than it sounds but we’ll see.

Score: 60% correct - Federation happened and stayed opt-in (✓), but it’s only partially bidirectional (partial ✓).

🟡 Ghost as top 10 of all Fediverse server: they have launched about 13,600 blogs federated according to Fedidb.com - which itself is super impressive. Each “server’ is one user only. If you sort by software and total users, they made it the 21st most popular server software. Impressive and think maybe next year.

🟡 BridgyFed Opt-Out: HALF RIGHT Predicted: Bluesky and Threads would support moving to “opt-out”; Mastodon would enable servers to choose “opt-in” or “opt-out” Actual: half a miss, is better than full miss?

✅ Mastodon instance-level opt-in launched (September 2024) - admins can now opt their entire instance into BridgyFed, effectively making it opt-out for users at the instance level. Indieweb.social that I founded, was one of the servers doing this. Newsmast was another. ❌ Individual user opt-out: BridgyFed remains opt-in for individual users on both Bluesky and Fediverse

The nuance: I correctly predicted that Mastodon would enable servers to choose opt-in/opt-out, which did happen via BridgyFed’s instance opt-in feature. However, the broader prediction that Bluesky and Threads leadership would actively support this shift.

That appears half-right too: willingness seems to be there at both Bluesky and Threads side to do this, and BridgyFed itself added the capability, but from what it appears funding is the main constraint.

Turns out there is a fix for that, here: www.patreon.com/ANewSocia… And here: store.anew.social Maybe next year?

🟡 Bluesky Growth: 80% RIGHT Predicted: 50 million registered users Actual: 41 million registered users (November 2025) I was optimistic but directionally correct. Bluesky grew from 25M to 40M—adding 15M users instead of the 25M I forecasted. Still impressive growth, though engagement metrics showed significant churn after the post-election surge.

🟡 Threads Growth: 67% RIGHT Predicted: 600 million MAU Actual: 400 million MAU (August 2025) Threads had solid growth from 300M to 400M, but fell short of my ambitious 600M target by 200M. I may have been overly enthusiastic here, but adding 100M MAU in a year is nothing to sneeze at. Frankly, they have cemented the win in being the clear “post-Twitter” microblogging platform to win, and they seem fully focused on building htis to 1 billion monthly users.

🟡 Fediverse MAU Baseline: MIXED / POSSIBLY LIKELY HALF WRONG Predicted: Fediverse MAU won’t drop below 1 million Actual: May have dipped below 1M at least on FediDB; varied by tracker The data here is inconsistent across sources. FediDB showed ~.09M active users in Dec 2025. Fediverse Index counts it as just over 1M at points during 2025. So this is Schrodinger’s prediction. But as it’s not unanimous I’ll cout this as half-wrong. Score: Uncertain - Likely didn’t fully hold on FediDB specifically, though the Fediverse clearly maintained a stable active user base overall.

🟡 Global South Relevance (South America & Africa): DIRECTIONALLY CORRECT Predicted: South America and Africa would grow increasingly relevant to the Open Social Web. Actual: Not yet dominant in raw user or instance counts on Mastodon or users on Bluesky, but relevance is emerging in the expected early form. Adoption is showing up first through usage on shared and diaspora-run instances, journalist and activist communities, and migration during political or platform stress.

THE MISSES ❌

❌ Another Major Platform Adds Support: NADA. Predicted: One other major top 20 US social media service (not Tumblr) adds ActivityPub Actual: Only part of this I got right is that Tumblr did NOT join the fediverse; and no other top 20 major platform did either. The Alt-Store is the newest major social enabled service to join, and that did happen this year, but they aren’t in the top 20. Got that one just wrong.

❌ One new non-microblogging type offering launches with with 50,000+ users in 2025. NOPE.
Bonfire hit 1.0 with impressive new features. As did Loops both brand new offerings….But not with 50,000 registered users. Yet.

❌ Bluesky MAU Baseline Prediction Predicted: Bluesky monthly active users won’t drop below current 20 million Actual: Full on whiffing this one. They declined to a steady 5 million monthly active users. The spirit of this (as with the Fediverse baseline prediction was in the right direction, as both services were stable, but I got the numbers wrong on both. bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.de…

❌ Bridge-Enabled Users (ActivityPub ↔ Bluesky): MISS Predicted: ~20% of Open Social Web users would be “bridge enabled” between ActivityPub and Bluesky. Actual: Current data shows ~125,000–126,000 fully bridged accounts. Against roughly 6 million combined Mastodon and Bluesky monthly active users, this equates to ~2% directly, or ~4% under a generous assumption that only half of users are realistically bridge-eligible. In other words, 20% is mathematically unsupported, bridge-enabled users remain firmly in the single-digit range. But again: The limiting factor is not interest but infrastructure and funding, reinforcing the earlier point. Give here. For 2026 predictions I’m going to try again on MAU predictions.

❌ No viable Bluesky Relay/AppView alternatives - HAPPILY MISSED. HAPPY to have gotten this wrong: Blacksky DID create viable relay/AppView alternatives: Blacksky Relay (2025): Built their own full-network relay using custom implementation. Publicly accessible - others can use it instead of Bluesky PBC’s relay Confirmed operational as of May 2025

📋 PREDICTIONS STILL AWAITING DATA

Several predictions need more digging to verify:

🔍 Aggregator apps (Flipboard Surf, OpenVibe, Tapestry) in top 5 apps that support the open social web by downloads - That one is tricky MAYBE. Anyone help me verify?

🔍 250,000+ posts from Lemmy/Mbin/PieFed - couldn’t find post amounts JUST for 2025. Anybody know?

🔍250,000+ federated podcast episodes - PodcastIndex doesn’t give out stats of active users that I could find.

If anyone has data on these, I’m all ears!

THE OVERALL VERDICT FOR LAST YEAR’S PREDICTIONS?

Overall accuracy: Strong C+ / B- I more or less got the macro trends right: growth across all major platforms, federation becoming real (even if partially), and Ghost shipping. My most interesting near-miss was on BridgyFed…And I was overly optimistic about Threads achieving full two-way federation and jury very much out if they get there in 2026.

What predictions would you make for 2026? Let me know in the comments—I promise to grade myself just as honestly next year! 😄