I think it’ll take time but as things settle a bit I wouldn’t be shocked to see a lot of uses spring up that draw in users without them really being aware they’re even using the fediverse.

For example one of the main draws to Reddit was always the tech knowledge of the users but us nerds are all here now so it’s only a matter of time before Twitter and Facebook have screenshots of Lemmy posts rather than Reddit posts, all the rabbit holes that used to lead to Reddit will start pointing here.

There are already interesting bots being written for communities here, I saw a chat GPT one and no doubt anyone making a fun toy is far more likely to design it to work here where it’s not going to have API access destroyed and everything is more flexible - I know that next bot I write will be for lemmy rather then Reddit which I’d normally use. I might even get round to writing the community RPG game that was going to work on its own subreddit, I could have it as a custom instance instead and allow members of federated communities to play.

There’s so many more possibilities and as they evolve they’ll slowly draw people over and when they have their toe in I suspect meny will stay. I’ve got a hundred ideas for things to make and with ai coding helping I’ll probably actually get round to finishing a dozen of them before the end of the year - I went to try new ways of visualising discussions, of working together and against each other to reach a common goal, I want to make games and mobile apps that work with communities in interesting ways and this is the perfect platform to do it on so I know I don’t be the only one

I’ve found the people I know that use third party apps are much more likely to post links and content as opposed to just lurking.