With Twitter becoming a hot mess since Elon Musk took over, those who have been culled as a result of Musk’s reformation plans have taken it upon themselves to launch their own social app – Mastodon. This disruption; akin to the true style of the tech industry, has led to the emergence of possible Twitter alternatives, with Mastodon topping the list of likely combatants.

Mastodon is a network created on the ActivityPub protocol that personally operates servers and allows others to join or establish their own servers to engage with others’ content. Mastodon creator and its sole full-time employee Eugen Rochko said in an interview with TechCrunch that the service has gained a tremendous amount of support (2.5+ million) across 8,600 different servers. The biggest of these, mastodon. social, is run and operated by Mastodon, with some 881k registered users, 210k of which are active.

Vying for Alpha Status

Rochko has closed Mastodon servers for new sign-ups in a move he calls a ‘victimless decision’, citing reasons that there are other places to register if they want to get involved in the Mastodon universe. This has created a curious scarcity situation which now has droves of stakeholders contacting Rochko and asking for access. 

Rochko says that the main reason he’s currently barring registration is that there is currently a lack in the number of qualified DevOps to scale up and maintain Mastodon’s operation. Until such a major roadblock is addressed, Rochko’s next step is prioritizing funding to fuel the next set of developments. Mastodon is currently set up as a Non-Profit Organization (NPO), financed mainly by a Patreon account that Rochko personally created. Patreon support has racked up from $7,000 last month to $31,000 at present. While Rochko said that Mastodon will remain a non-profit, he is motioning for a split model in the short run. His aim for such a move is to facilitate “sustainable and fair business.”

Unlike WordPress’ approach, Rochko says that there are no plans to incorporate ads into the service, although he doesn’t totally deny the idea as a future side-grade. As per Rochko: 

“You have to consider the fediverse nature of the network. Anyone could develop another platform, using the same ActivityPub protocol [that Mastodon does], but with completely different software around it, with different expectations and different features. And if they wanted to build ads into it, they could, in theory.”

Rochko follows up that he leaves the operators of Mastodon servers to their own devices, but ironically favors something similar to what Musk has currently floated on Twitter. He revealed that he had also been talking with investors, although for the most part, it seems that many of those who want to give him support really don’t understand what he’s trying to do. A recurring theme, based on Rochko’s answers, seems to be the further commercialization of the platform. 

Mastodon has been notable for how it has been picking up attention following the whole ‘Twitter 2.0’ ordeal – so much that it triggered a new Musk-era rule forbidding links to competing social networks. Mastodon’s own Twitter account was suspended as a result. Also worth noting is how Mastodon approaches social space, basing itself on an unorthodox, open-source ‘federated’ concept. That means that different servers use the same protocol to speak to each other and share content, where server operators oversee registered user activity and host them on their respective servers.

Its name seems to have been derived from a metaphor, with the servers being like a herd of animals that generally move in a distinct direction. Mastodon has been seeing an average of about 4,000 downloads per day, but recent peaks do note record-high downloads of 149k on Android and 235k on iOS. These bumps, in particular, happened during the announcement of Twitter’s massive layoffs. 

The Wrap

So, Mastodon is something new and unique – the real question is whether or not it’ll last. If we remove Twitter from the equation, technological evolution would have eventually led to the creation of Mastodon, which was only catalyzed by all the recent happenings over at Twitter. Though it won’t likely happen overnight, if Mastodon can stay its present course, further improve on its unique value proposition, and secure additional funding, then it might soon find its place on one of the eternal pedestals of social platforms.

Sources 

https://bit.ly/3vjD4kn