A significant number of the people I follow on Twitter set up mastodon accounts but that kind of ran out of steam within a few months and I rarely see Mastodon mentioned anymore.
A much larger number have set up Threads accounts and either posting on Twitter less or are gone entirely.
It's anecdotal, but I think Mastodon missed the boat, in large part because of the pretty terrible sign up experience.
Most people noped out at "First, pick a server, but don't worry, this list only includes the ones who promise to be safe!", most of the rest when they hit "The server suggested by the person you want to follow is not taking new signups".
Here's another tracker that shows a higher number.
https://fediverse.observer/stats
I suspect it's hard to measure this accurately as the users are spread over several thousand servers, and presumably servers can lie about their user count. It's like measuring how many email addresses exist, you can only estimate.
What matters more to me is what kind of community exists. I joined Twitter late and found it was hard to engage because it was so chaotic. People shouting past eachother or making cheap shots. Not my thing, I didn't stay. Mastodon "looks like twitter" but doesn't feel like that. We know that community-based moderation can work at scale, that's what Reddit uses, so I'm hopeful Mastodon will keep it's safe feeling.
Mastodon is going to hit drama very soon which may end in its demise. Meta wants to enter it so they can slurp up everything. You're going to run into the situation of some server admins going "OK sure, I will federate with Meta" and others going "By the power of Grayskull! I shall block Meta!".
My favorite part about Mastodon is the general lack of self-promotion. Twitter/Instagram... are made of people perpetually preening professionally and socially. Mastodon is, for the most part, just people being weird and silly. Very refreshing.
I keep updating my Mastodon deathwatch: https://tech.lgbt/@Kye/109982031390613361
The text:
10k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
100k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
1,000k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
1,300k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
1,400k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
1,800k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
1,900k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
2,000k monthly active users: "Mastodon is dead!"
I'm starting to think these people aren't real doctors.
Hasn't threads hit over 100m? Even if 90% just signed up to check it out and never use it again, that's a lot. And it was rushed out because twitter was busy shooting itself in the foot.
I'm not sure how mastodon people are so bullish on it. It's like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to 'tooting'.
Compared to the meteoric rise of Threads, it's hard to argue that they didn't fumble the bag when the end-zone was wide open.
Once you get past the user-hostile joining and following process, ultimately Mastodon just has awful content discoverability since there's no algorithmic feed available, not even good reply displays. You're relying on your follows to retoot anything interesting, and one prolific poster can completely flood your feed.
It's just not good enough. I really tried to like it, but it just isn't.
According to Statista, there were 10 million registered users as of March 2023: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376022/global-registere...
I hope it keeps hitting them.
Can anyone recommend a nice peer to peer social media thing?
Is there a way to 'get started'?
I saw a list of Ukraine war accounts on reddit, which as interesting as it is, isn't the vibe I want to center my day around.
Timeline vs thread tree.
I strongly prefer the latter.
How about you?
This is a real achievement not like the bullshit Threads account merger that’s being portrayed as “omG sHaTtErInG sIgNuP rEcOrDs In ThE fEdIvErSe.”
erm, Threads hit 100M on day 5
[flagged]
2M what... silos? conversation happening in disconnected realms..... it's like saying there are 2M blogs on blogger or tumblr
When moved from Twitter to Mastodon, I was really surprised by the amount of new type of people that I have little to no visibility before: not super famous but good writers, teachers, niche open source enthusiasts, less known indie game devs, open source hardware manufactures, scientists, regional activists, etc. I'm really pleased with the quality of my feed and discussions that I have. Reminds me of Twitter when it was just launched.
People can complain about UX and the slow grow (especially compared to Threads) but the truth is - right now, there is enough audience and content to make it engaging and useful. I don't think there is much value in the explosive growth that some people want from it.