Popular add-ons get recommended on AMO while new add-ons are very hard to discover. This creates a certain “apple app store”-like dynamic that might work for some commercial partners who have a whole marketing department behind them, but hinders free software innovation. Why? Because small projects will remain niche for a very long time. The main distribution platform works against them.
I already ranted about this here a while ago. Imho the situation has worsened since then. We now have a “tightly curated” list of extensions which “may only feature up to a few hundred, or less, at a time.” Every project that is not on this list gets a warning message slapped on its AMO page:
This is not a Recommended Extension. Make sure you trust it before installing.
I understand the intention, but what most users will read is simply this: Mozilla does not recommend installing this! Do not trust this piece of code. It could be anything. Use what everyone else is using.
Things like this will further increase the gap between the popular and the unknown, the known and the new.