Mastodon Usage Soaring as Twitter Rebranding Leads to User Exodus: CEO Eugen Rochko

Twitter’s Decline Boosts Mastodon’s User Numbers

Mastodon, an open-source competitor to Twitter, is seeing a huge rise in users as it replaces its famous logo with Elon Musk’s favorite letter, “X.” Eugen Rochko, founder and CEO of Mastodon, said in a new post that the number of monthly active users for his alternative to Twitter has been steadily rising over the past couple of months and has now hit 2.1 million. Rochko said that this means they are “not far off from our last peak.”

Before, the highest number of monthly active users on Mastodon was 2.5 million, which happened in October and November, right after Elon Musk officially took over Twitter. The founder of Mastodon had said that the network used to be much smaller, with only about 300,000 active users each month.

Mastodon’s growth often seems to depend on what Twitter does, or more accurately, what it does not do. After Twitter was bought by Musk, for example, some longtime users left because they did not like the changes he made to their favorite microblogging site. These changes included firing a lot of people and making erratic decisions about Twitter’s platform, policies, and product strategies. For example, Musk botched the launch of Twitter Blue, the subscription service, which made verification less valuable by letting anyone with a credit card pay for it. That choice is still making Twitter less fun because the company just recently admitted it had a problem with Verified spammers, which means Twitter Direct Messages need to be changed.

Some people who were leaving Twitter tried Mastodon after Musk took it over, but not all of them stuck with it. As a result, Mastodon’s monthly active users dropped from 2.5 million at its peak to 1.7 million at the start of this month. Other people may have moved on to the new Twitter options, such as Bluesky, T2, Spill, Post, and others. And some people may have stopped using Twitter altogether or greatly cut down on sharing, which is why Twitter traffic is going down.

Mastodon might be getting a boost from Musk’s mistakes with Twitter, but it is not clear yet if this is because of the increased interest in ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol that runs the Mastodon network and other apps. Instagram Threads, Meta’s new Twitter competitor, has promised to work with ActivityPub. This may have made more people aware of Mastodon and open social networks in general.

But Twitter users might just be mad at Musk for his recent decision to limit the number of tweets that users and subscribers could see at once. This is a very strange product choice that makes it impossible for users to see content on the platform, which is now called X. Musk said that Twitter had to change the rate limits because there were a lot more bots and spam. But even though most social networks have some kind of rate limiting in place for this reason, they do not usually apply those limits to end users, which means they can still see the site’s content (and ads).

This is another thing that might be causing Mastodon’s active user growth to pick up again.

Or maybe it is a mix of these and other factors, such as the surge in popularity of well-designed third-party Mastodon apps that have made using the social network easier and more fun. That includes apps made by people who used to make third-party apps for Twitter, like Ivory by Tapbots, Woolly, which is based on TweetDeck, and Mammoth, a Mastodon client from the person who made the Twitter app Aviary. After Mozilla invested in the project, a new developer took over as lead developer.

Other Mastodon apps, like Ice Cubes and the simple client Radiant, have also come out. Also, Mastodon’s main mobile app got an update earlier this month that was meant to fix some problems and add more customization options. Mastodon had 1.4 million monthly active users when it first came out, and Rochko noticed that sharing activity had tripled over the weekend. This was probably because Twitter has put limits on how many tweets can be seen.

Other tech companies are also interested in Mastodon. For example, WordPress bought a plugin that lets WordPress blogs feed into Mastodon. Medium also started its own Mastodon server, and Flipboard made its social reading app work with the network, started its own server, and is working to make it work with ActivityPub.

Mastodon’s Growth and Twitter’s Decline

The article goes into great detail about how Mastodon’s monthly active users have been steadily rising to hit 2.1 million, which is not far from its all-time high of 2.5 million. It looks at what made Mastodon popular, such as Twitter’s mistakes, Elon Musk’s ownership, and the desire for open social networking.

Mastodon’s growth often seems to depend on what Twitter does, or more accurately, what it does not do.

Factors Influencing Mastodon’s Active User Growth

Twitter’s policy of rate-limiting, interest in decentralized social networking, and the rise of polished third-party Mastodon clients are just a few of the things that have led to Mastodon’s increased active user growth.

Interest from Tech Companies

Tech companies like WordPress, Medium, and Flipboard are becoming more interested in Mastodon. They have started their own Mastodon servers and merged with the network.