Decentralized social network Mastodon is also seeing some excitement from the “escape” of X, founder Eugen Roszko shared on the platform ahead of the weekend. While Twitter-like startup Bluesky has been garnering headlines and attention for its rapid popularity among former X users, a smaller group appears to be turning its attention to open-source networking platform Mastodon. Mastodon saw a 47% increase in downloads and monthly actives on iOS. Rochko said users have grown to 894,000 across all Mastodon servers.
In a post on Mastodon, the founder and CEO said that downloads of the official app are increasing. In addition to iOS' 47% increase, Android saw an additional 17% increase. Sign-ups also increased 27% month over month, with 90,000 new accounts registered in November.
“While we may not be the largest numerically yet, Mastodon (and Fediverse) have proven themselves to be effective and reliable communication platforms over the past eight years, and rely on venture capital to survive. “I'm not doing it,” he wrote. Lochko subtly pokes at one of Bluesky's potential weaknesses in the final part.
While Mastodon is primarily supported through crowdfunding and grants, BlueSky is taking a more traditional startup path by raising money from outside investors. Last month, the company secured a $15 million Series A led by Blockchain Capital. Bluesky plans to generate revenue in the future through subscriptions and by offering other paid services, such as access to custom domains. For some former X users who are now choosing Mastodon, Bluesky's mandate to pursue venture-scale returns is just fine.
Despite the introduction in the wake of Mastodon's recent “X escape,” the latest activity remains below late 2022 levels. At the time, Mastodon gained early momentum thanks to other drama on Twitter, including product changes introduced by Elon Musk around moderation and paid verification. As of November 2022, Mastodon announced at the time that it had more than 1 million monthly active users and was seeing “thousands” of registrations per hour.
Since then, the X alternative user landscape has slowed, with total users now exceeding 7.6 million, while Bluesky has over 19.4 million users, up from 16 million just a few days ago. I am.
Despite the threat from Blue Sky, the Fediverse, an open social web powered by the ActivityPub protocol that underpins new initiatives like Mastodon and Metaz Thread, is a “long game,” Rochko said. (Threads' more than 275 million users do not count against the broader Fediverse users of more than 10.9 million, as the platform is not yet fully federated.)
“I spent 25 percent of my life working on Mastodon, which is kind of wild when you think about it,” Rochko mused about Mastodon. “When I started, Google+ still existed. We're doing something that one of the most resourceful companies in the world couldn't do. It's not easy. It's always easier to put an ad in there,” he said, likely referring to plans for ad-supported Threads. “But the Fediverse is a long game.”