Can I suggest that success here is modifying and building on existing tools that work with other existing tools and making them work better.

For example - I found git.sr.ht/~cloutier/dotmakeup #dotmakeup by @Vincent Cloutier - which can pull instagram and twitter posts and syndicate them. #Friendica has add on that post to Twitter - so my thinking is that adding #dotmakup tools into Friendica would help allow users to migrate to Friendica while maintaining connections via Twitter and Instagram

Dropping back a bit Friendica works really well on #Yunohost - making #Yunohost easier to run on a homerouter as a drop in replacement for ISP supplied routers would mean that it would be easier for people to buy a bit of kit, take it home , turn it on , have their own ActivityPub server running fairly quickly and be linked into those existing communities (both ActivityPub and commercial)

What specifically were the issues that you ran into?

Improving it - that's alot less work than recreating something from scratch.

Well I have but my family aren't massive social media users so its pretty lightweight activity. I guess my experience is that friendica has a lot of features in there - I like groups and events myself but also I found myself looking at how one account can manage another - I thin this would be great for parent/child accounts - perhaps it might need a few more controls around what the child account can/cannot do ..

I'm actually not far from creating another friendica instance just as a 'trial' server for people I know who want to try it out.

I wish I was more capable in taking ideas for features that I would find useful and turning them into deliverable things. I'm a Business Analyst so I can define the requirements but I need some dev friends to help me out doing the delivery.