Reflections

Zulip year in review 2024

Alya Abbott β€’ 2 min read

As we head into the new year, we want to share some fun facts and highlights from 2024.

Emoji 😸

Zulip users are a positive bunch! About 3% of messages earned an emoji reaction, with the top 10 reactions of 2024 being (in order):

Why an octopus πŸ™? Zulip users like to use the octopus emoji, with its raised tentacles, to indicate celebration (similar to πŸŽ‰).

Apps πŸ–₯οΈπŸ“±

In 2024, half of Zulip messages were sent from the Desktop app. Zulip’s next-generation mobile app for Android and iOS was released in beta last week, so the mobile number may be higher next year!

Most underused Zulip features πŸ‘€

  1. Picking your home view: Only 1.2% of active users have changed their home view (inbox, recent conversations or the combined feed) from the default for their organization.

  1. @topic mentions: You can see in the right sidebar which users have participated in the topic you’re reading, and mention just the participants in your messages. @topic mentions are used 9x less often than @all mentions, and 21x less often than personal mentions.

  1. Links in channel descriptions: You can use any formatting you like in channel descriptions, including links, emoji, bold/italics, and more. Only 17% of active channels have a non-default description, and 9% of those make use of formatting.

Thanks to our global open-source community! 🌍

Zulip giving back 🫢

We sponsored over 2000 open-source projects, non-profits, educational institutions, and academic research groups in 2024.

Our welcoming development community mentored 17 new open-source contributors this summer, teaching them how to collaborate on developing a complex software system.

β€œMy experience with Zulip over the past few months has been nothing short of transformative. Working on this project has been a journey filled with learning and growth.” β€” Afeefuddin

Parting thoughts πŸ‘‹

We love hearing from our user community. Please reach out via our usual support channels or in the Zulip development community to report bugs, propose new features, or simply share your Zulip story.

Best of luck in the New Year from all of us at Zulip!