{"id":17705,"date":"2024-11-18T19:11:42","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T19:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=17705"},"modified":"2024-11-18T19:11:42","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T19:11:42","slug":"mastodon-sees-a-boost-from-the-x-exodus-too-founder-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=17705","title":{"rendered":"Mastodon sees a boost from the \u2018X exodus,\u2019 too, founder says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Decentralized social network <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/joinmastodon.org\/\">Mastodon<\/a> is also seeing some uplift from <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/11\/12\/bluesky-is-seeing-an-exodus-of-unhappy-x-users-following-the-election\/\">the X \u201cexodus<\/a>,\u201d founder Eugen Rochko <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@Gargron\/113488825856891653\">shared<\/a> on the platform just ahead of the weekend. While the <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/11\/15\/what-is-bluesky-everything-to-know-about-the-x-competitor\/\">Twitter-like startup<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/11\/14\/how-to-use-bluesky-the-twitter-like-app-thats-taking-on-elon-musks-x\/\">Bluesky<\/a> has been capturing headlines and attention for its <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/11\/14\/bluesky-says-1-million-people-signed-up-for-the-platform-in-last-24-hours\/\">rapid adoption<\/a> among former X users, a smaller group has apparently turned to the open source networking platform <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/07\/24\/what-is-mastodon\/\">Mastodon<\/a>, which has seen downloads increase by 47% on iOS and its monthly active users grow to 894,000 across all Mastodon servers, Rochko says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a post on Mastodon, the founder and CEO noted that official app downloads were growing. In addition to the 47% on iOS, they had increased by a smaller 17% on Android. Month over month, signups were also up by 27% with 90,000 newly registered accounts in November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe may not be the biggest by numbers yet, but Mastodon (and the fediverse) has proven itself to be an effective and reliable communications platform over the course of the last 8 years, and does not depend on venture capital to survive,\u201d <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@Gargron\/113488825856891653\">wrote<\/a> Rochko, subtly jabbing at one of Bluesky\u2019s potential weaknesses with that last bit. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Mastodon is <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/10\/02\/amid-twitter-chaos-mastodon-grew-donations-488-in-2022-reached-1-8m-monthly-active-users\/\">largely crowdfunded<\/a> and grant-supported, Bluesky has gone the more traditional startup route by raising money from outside investors. The company last month closed on a <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/10\/24\/bluesky-raises-15m-series-a-plans-to-launch-subscriptions\/\">$15 million Series A,<\/a> led by Blockchain Capital. Bluesky plans to generate revenue via <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/bsky.social\/about\/blog\/10-24-2024-series-a\">subscriptions<\/a> at some later point and by providing other paid services, like <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/07\/05\/bluesky-announces-its-8m-seed-round-first-paid-service-custom-domains\/\">access to custom domains<\/a>. For some former X users now choosing Mastodon, Bluesky\u2019s obligation to chase venture-sized returns is a non-starter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite Mastodon\u2019s recent \u201cX exodus\u201d-fueled adoption, the latest activity still falls below late 2022 levels, when <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2022\/11\/07\/boosted-by-twitter-drama-mastodon-reaches-1-million-active-monthly-users\/\">Mastodon had gotten an early boost<\/a> thanks to other Twitter drama, including the product changes Elon Musk introduced around <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/11\/6\/23443871\/elon-musk-twitter-permaban-impersonation-parody\">moderation<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2022\/11\/05\/twitter-begins-rolling-out-7-99-twitter-blue-plan-with-verification-fewer-ads\/\">paid verification<\/a>. As of November 2022, Mastodon had <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2022\/11\/07\/boosted-by-twitter-drama-mastodon-reaches-1-million-active-monthly-users\/\">surpassed<\/a> 1 million monthly active users and was seeing \u201cthousands\u201d of registrations per hour, it said at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things have slowed since for the X alternative, which today has north of <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/fedidb.org\/software\">7.6 million<\/a> total users compared with Bluesky\u2019s now more than <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/bsky.jazco.dev\/stats\">19.4 million<\/a>, which is up from <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/11\/14\/how-to-use-bluesky-the-twitter-like-app-thats-taking-on-elon-musks-x\/\">16 million<\/a> just days ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the threat from Bluesky, Rochko says that the fediverse \u2014 or the open social web powered by the ActivityPub protocol that underpins Mastodon and newer efforts like Meta\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/08\/16\/what-is-instagrams-threads-app-all-your-questions-answered\/\">Threads<\/a> \u2014 is the \u201clong game.\u201d (Threads\u2019 275 million+ users are not counted among the <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/fedidb.org\/\">10.9+ million broader fediverse <\/a>users because the platform isn\u2019t fully federated yet.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI spent 25% of my life working on Mastodon. It\u2019s kind of wild when you think about it,\u201d Rochko <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@Gargron\/113488873749876448\">mused on Mastodon<\/a>. \u201cWhen I started, Google+ was still around. We\u2019re doing what one of the most resourceful companies in the world couldn\u2019t do. It\u2019s not easy. It\u2019s always easier to just build A Website, then slap some ads on it,\u201d he said, likely referencing Threads\u2019 plan to be <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2024\/11\/13\/24295735\/threads-ads-rumor-2025\">ad-supported<\/a>. \u201cBut the fediverse is the long game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<hr style=\"border-top: 2px solid #ccc; margin-top: 20px;\">\n<p><em>Source: <\/em> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/11\/18\/mastodon-sees-a-boost-from-the-x-exodus-too-founder-says\/\">techcrunch.com\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Decentralized social network Mastodon is also seeing some uplift from the X \u201cexodus,\u201d founder Eugen Rochko shared on the platform just ahead of the weekend. While the Twitter-like startup Bluesky has been capturing headlines and attention for its rapid adoption among former X users, a smaller group has apparently turned to the open source networking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}