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> I don’t see this platform being able to benefit from the Twitter exodus. What you might say is 'I don't think Mastodon is going to replace Twitter', but I do
by OscarCunningham 4y ago
> I don’t see this platform being able to benefit from the Twitter exodus.
What you might say is 'I don't think Mastodon is going to replace Twitter', but I don't think you can argue that Mastodon won't benefit from the Twitter exodus because it has already gained a million users.
Looking at the charts on https://the-federation.info/mastodon https://the-federation.info/mastodon you can see that in May there was an influx of about 500 thousand new users after Musk's acquisition of twitter was announced. About 100 thousand of those stuck around. This time the number of new users is 1.1 million and still rising. So proportionally, the Twitter exodus will probably bring Mastodon at least 220 thousand new permanent users. My actual guess would be that a higher proportion will stick around this time, because of network effects.
- kragen 4y agoi fear that Mastodon will suffer enormously from the Twitter exodus because it has already had to accommodate a million new users. a million new customers is great, a million new members of a community is a giant acculturation problem
- KerrAvon 4y agoWhat’s interesting is that it’s doing fine so far; existing users are being really helpful and welcoming to the newbs. It’s actually a really pleasant place to be compared to Twitter. (It might be helping that everybody leaving Twitter is leaving Twitter for the same reason.)
- dredmorbius 4y agoSeptembers happen.
- kragen 4y agoSeptembers demolish communities.
- dredmorbius 4y agoSome more than others, but most certainly not all. Where this one falls for Mastodon remains to be seen. It's more AOLish than Academic, in the sense that it's the result of a capricious event on a large outside-the-destination-system network (Twitter, in this case) rather than a regular seasonal influx (as with uni students discovering Usenet). It isn't however a wholesale dumping of an entire community onto another though as was the case for AOL in 1993. Mastodon's adoption for at least the past six years has tended to be driven by failures and frustrations with other platforms, and Twitter in particular. Those seem to be occurring in increasing waves. There's some grumbling and adjustment with each, but so far, knock wood, Mastodon's assimilated the influx fairly well.
- kragen 4y agoYep, I hope it continues working.
- dredmorbius 4y agoIt's worth noting that whilst the present migration is still in process, the magnitude is approximately 1/5 of extant profiles. That's more Academic than AOL scale. (1 million new profiles on a base of about 5 million.) Based on past history, perhaps 20% will remain, though how many of the extant profiles themselves are active I'm not sure (I suspect probably also ~20%, which means it all washes out). At the time of the September that Never Ended, Usenet was ~1m total users (based on data from John Quarterman's The Matrix (1990) citing DEC researcher Brian Reid, which I've referenced in earlier HN comments). I believe AOL at the time was at least of an equivalent magnitude, if not several times this.
- kragen 4y agoThat sounds right.
- nr2x 4y agoOk, in that case I’ll clarify: I don’t think the vast majority of Twitter users will benefit from Mastodon.
- rchaud 4y agoassuming Twitter stays exactly as it is, I'd agree. But it's clear with the planned changes that they're turning paid blue check accounts into the equivalent of the ads you see at the top of your Google search, placed above 'organic' results.
- nr2x 4y agoTo also clarify I do think Twitter is a dead man walking, so something will take over. Hopefully AT will deliver.