As Twitter backlash grows, rival Mastodon reaches 2.5M monthly users

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/tech/mastodon-twitter-usage/index.html

by GavCo • 4 years ago

41 24 4 years ago

Problem with Mastodon is 1/the name 2/ "pods". I simply forgot which damn pod I signed up to and most people are simply unwilling to understand what the hell is a "pod". People just want on url where to sign up to.

jszymborski4• 4 years ago

I think you might be thinking of FunkWhale re: "pods". They're just called instances in Mastodon.

Although your point is taken, instances can be a stumbling block.

I think the email analogy works well here. You can choose Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail depending on what service you like better, but you can chat with whoever you like regardless of what email service they use. Heck, you can host your own email if you like!

Re: the "just want one url" concern, there's joinmastodon.org

xg153• 4 years ago

Still wondering if the Mastodon community couldn't turn this into an advantage. Right now, users are mostly confused why there is no common way to sign up for "Mastodon" as you did for Twitter.

Usually, in the end, they sign up at the first instance they know through media or the one where all their friends are. This leads to large instances becoming ever larger and eventually risking being overloaded.

So if new users don't care about instances and just want a central entrypoint and if the Mastodon community cares a lot about instances and wants to avoid huge instances dominating or getting overloaded - why not build some central "entrypoint" where users can sign-up and which will assign users to an instance?

The selection could be done via user-centric features - e.g. preference, areas of interest, friends, location, etc - but could also be constrained by the amount of new users that instances are willing to accept.

An instance could register with this service and offer e.g. a contingent of 500 slots for new accounts. Then the service could include the number of free slots for each instance into the calculation and eventually selects an instance which satisfies the user's preferences while also balancing new users between all instances.

constantcrying• 4 years ago

That's not the problem, that is the point of ""mastadon"".

jmole• 4 years ago

My favorite thing about mastodon: I'm not asked to sign up as I scroll down the page.

nostromo• 4 years ago

Twitter got rid of that right after the Musk takeover.

(Although I think a softer version of it reappeared for a short bit…)

lapcat• 4 years ago

There's still a persistent bar at the bottom of the page.

petee• 4 years ago

Hmm no, i see the popup all the time, including today. Sometimes its full screen, sometimes just a window, and about 1/4 of the time it cannot be closed without redirecting to sign up

jszymborski4• 4 years ago

Seems like John Mastodon will soon be the richest man on earth.

xg153• 4 years ago

We like to call him by his pen name, Cowboy Bebop.

booboofixer2• 4 years ago

Are all Mastodon instances indexed somewhere? Last time i tried to look at all the communities, i only found about 30 on their main website.

jszymborski4• 4 years ago

Usually fediverse.space is the place to go but it seems down atm.

fediverse.party also has this information.

also more info here https://chaos.social/@leah/99837391793032137

bruceb• 4 years ago

I signed up just to follow elonjet. The reality is a large portion of people will sign up, check it a few times and then just continue to use Twitter.

Lots of the people proclaiming they are leaving Twitter for Mastodon didn't even last a week before they were posting on Twitter again.

booboofixer2• 4 years ago

Never count on your fellow man to have a strong constitution.

MichaelZuo• 4 years ago

It is a bit sad seeing millions of users behave like that. But on the positive side it serves as an effective signal for muting.

haunter• 4 years ago

I still don’t see how it’s a rival when the whole instance and moderating system is more akin to Discord or Reddit

Just because there is a flat timeline to post doesn’t make it a Twitter rival

dangus• 4 years ago

The content format is basically identical. I think claiming that it’s not a rival based on technical implementation details isn’t giving it enough credit.

You can also think about alternatives like Truth Social and Parler essentially cloning the Twitter content format, aren’t they also Twitter rivals? Couldn’t they be seen as different “instances” of Twitter with different moderation standards given that their functionality is basically identical?

In other words, the conversation should move away from “How does this work on a technical level?” and more toward “what value does this have for me?”

The truth is that Mastodon, regardless of instancing, holds the same value proposition as Twitter. It’s a legitimate alternative.

claytongulick• 4 years ago

IIRC, truth social is a custom mastodon instance.

advisedwang• 4 years ago

For comparison, Twitter has 237M daily active users. So even assuming MAU=DAU, that's about 1%.

rurban• 4 years ago

It's 8.7M actually.

https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount

As Twitter backlash grows, rival Mastodon reaches 2.5M monthly users

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