@BeAware@polarity@hopland@zilog80 I think a huge part of this is funding. To move quickly you need someone to be able to dedicate a lot of time. To do that, they usually either need someone to pay them to do it or they need to think that there might be a payout down the line. As long as the fediverse doesn't have a monetization scheme, you can't move quickly on anything. An API for search where people could then monetize their own third-party search solution could be a good step.
@miturian@polarity@hopland@zilog80 also the fact that the ones who do develop on the platform for very little benefit and build discovery features, get harassed and threatened until they shut their project down or make it so it's basically unusable.
See: BridgyFed opt-in bullshit, FediOnFire that was killed about a month ago, and more recently, Fedicate which was harassed and threatened till they changed the entire purpose of the project.
There's many things and people working against building on an open platform unfortunately.🤦♂️