I think there are several different issues here:
1) USsians in general are not aware or concerned about owning and controlling their data or online presence. You can see this with all the companies that are shutting down their blogs and websites and relying on Facebook pages and a Twitter account.
2) There is also the "my friends are not there" argument. If this was as true as people think, however, we'd all still be on AOL, Friendster, and MySpace. Some people that were on #
Facebook and refused to try anything else are now on FB and #
GPlus.
3)
~friendica 
,
Diaspora
, #
StatusNet, #
BuddyCloud, #
OneSocialWeb, #
Jappix, and so on need to understand that
proprietary and centralized networks are the competition and start cooperating. I have some comments about this below. Most of these networks have failed to understand this, and so they are "federated" in isolation.
4) Topics and standards of behavior: Most of the networks I frequent do tend to have mostly technical and political topics. Some science and some religion also (although they tend to be sorely bigoted against people with any religious beliefs). On the other hand, most people want to be where the topics include popular television/movie/music celebrities and the media they make. For most of the year or so that I was on Facebook, Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black probably filled my screen more often than anything except the latest Zynga game (until I blocked it) and one of my nephews' whining.
5) As a Black USsian, I think blacks in general are years behind understanding that the future is not about getting some for-profit or non-profit LOOAC (large, out-of-area corporation) to come to your aid, but about creating and controlling smaller entities that work for
your benefit. I would guess that you won't find as many blacks on Diaspora or StatusNet, and that you won't find as many blacks using independent domains for their mail or instant messaging, either.
This issue can be partially-corrected, I believe, through more and better marketing.
6) The US in general seems to admire big companies (the "FORTUNE500" type). We admire "small" companies only when they are rapidly growing ( the "INC500" type ). We admire big non-profits (the Red Cross), but not smaller, locally-focused ones. We like big, centralized government agencies(left-wingers like big domestic agencies, right-wingers like big militaries). We join the big political parties that big corporate lobbyists own and control, but won't help or participate in any way with the smaller ones that are still controlled by their members. We buy computer software made by that big corporation, then pay someone to fix it, rather than take a chance with smaller organizations' offerings (including FOSS).
7) We (Black USsians) fail to understand that having a large corporation between you and your data or between you and your contacts means that corporation controls your data and your access to those contacts. Whether that organization is for-profit or non-profit, that is a bad thing. If that corporation's main income source isn't
paid (by users like you) hosting, your data and your contacts are subject to exploitation at any time.
I believe this one issue can be partially corrected by increased and better marketing.
It would be great to get some input from people in other ethnic minority groups and other countries.
Footnote: Federated,Distributed Networks MUST Work Together
I tried several times to convince the guy behind #
Appleseed to work together with #
Friendica and StatusNet to make #
federation better for all of us (users, hosts, and developers alike). Likewise, I've tried to convince the Diaspora people. The BuddyCloud people, #
StatusNet / #
OStatus, and #
MediaGoblin sound like they are interested. OSW is "on hiatus" but still accepting pull requests, and Jappix (so far) seems like it is just a web front-end for your existing Jabber/XMPP accounts and they've been silent in response to inquiries about #
interfederation.
The #
rstatus people appear to be serious about federation with other OStatus-using applications, but there is an annoying bug that prevents their application from sending posts to StatusNet. Until that is corrected, I see little likelihood that they'll be willing to connect to other federation protocols.