When it started, Mastodon had an existing userbase to communicate with on OStatus, in the existing GNU Social communities, so it could skip the "Who wants to ta

When it started, Mastodon had an existing userbase to communicate with on OStatus, in the existing GNU Social communities, so it could skip the "Who wants to talk to a ghost town?" era of a social media's growth. Though this prompts us to wonder why GNU Social took off (modestly) but Diaspora didn't.