The decentralized social network Mastodon is experiencing a notable increase in popularity amidst a shift from platform X, shared its founder Eugen Rochko just before the weekend. Although the Twitter-like platform Bluesky has been capturing much of the spotlight due to its swift adoption by former X users, a niche group has opted for the open-source alternative Mastodon. This platform has witnessed a 47% surge in downloads on iOS and an increase in monthly active users reaching 894,000 across all its servers, Rochko reported.
In a detailed post on Mastodon, Rochko, the founder and CEO, mentioned that the official app’s downloads are on the rise. Besides the significant 47% increase on iOS, there has also been a 17% rise on Android. Furthermore, sign-ups have grown by 27% month over month, with 90,000 new accounts registered in November alone.
Rochko expressed, “While we may not yet be the biggest in terms of numbers, Mastodon, along with the fediverse, has established itself as an effective and reliable communication platform over the past eight years. Importantly, it does not rely on venture capital to sustain itself,” subtly hinting at Bluesky’s potential vulnerability in this area.
Unlike Mastodon, which primarily relies on crowdfunding and grants, Bluesky has opted for a more traditional startup path by securing funding from external investors. Last month, the company successfully closed a $15 million Series A round led by Blockchain Capital. Bluesky plans to generate revenue through subscription services and other paid offerings like custom domain access. This approach of prioritizing venture-sized returns has led some former X users to prefer Mastodon.
Despite the recent influx of X defectors choosing Mastodon, the activity on the platform still falls short of its late 2022 levels. During that period, Mastodon enjoyed an initial popularity boost due to various Twitter controversies, including changes introduced by Elon Musk concerning moderation and paid verification. By November 2022, Mastodon had exceeded 1 million monthly active users and was registering thousands of new accounts every hour.
However, the pace has slowed for Mastodon since then, with just over 7.6 million total users today compared to Bluesky’s more than 19.4 million, a jump from 16 million only days prior.
Despite the competition from Bluesky, Rochko maintains that the fediverse—the open social web driven by the ActivityPub protocol that supports Mastodon and similar platforms such as Meta’s Threads—is a “long game.” (Although Threads has over 275 million users, they aren’t counted among the 10.9+ million broader fediverse users due to its incomplete federation.)
Reflecting on his journey, Rochko wrote, “I’ve spent 25% of my life working on Mastodon. It’s quite remarkable when you think about it. When I started, Google+ was still around. We’re accomplishing what one of the most resourceful companies in the world couldn’t. It’s not simple. Building just any website and monetizing it with ads is much easier,” likely alluding to Threads’ ad-supported strategy. “Nonetheless, the fediverse remains the long game.”
