# Popular Software

I wonder how does popular software gets... well, popular. How does popular and well-known piece of communication software, such as Mastodon and Discourse, get popular and well-known.

Is it because they are the first of its kind? Not quite. Although some popular services that we use today are the first of its kind (like TinyURL), Discourse and Mastodon are not the first of its kind. Before Mastodon, there's Friendica, and before Discourse, there are many open-source discussion forum software, such as phpBB.

Is it because they have something revolutionary and/or innovative that garnered a lot of attention? I think this is the most likely. If you compare the login interface of Friendica to Mastodon's, you can see that Mastodon has an instantly recognizable interface, compared to the modern but boring interface of Friendica.

![Friendica login](https://files.catbox.moe/kk1v90.png)
![Mastodon login](https://files.catbox.moe/05d95q.png)

Or if you look at a newer software, [Bun](https://bun.sh), a "blazingly-fast JavaScript runtime", you can already see why people are hyping.