Now, a couple of days ago, it was announced that Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. That did not happen yet, as it will take some time for the process to conclude, it’s expected for the deal to be closed by the end of the year.
Mastodon is “exploding” thanks to Musk’s Twitter takeover news
The sheer confirmation of the deal did cause various reactions. While some are glad Elon Musk is taking over Twitter, others are not so happy. People seem to be checking out the alternatives, and many of them decided to give Mastodon a try. Mastodon details itself as the “largest decentralized social network on the internet”. The company’s founder, Eugen Rochko, confirmed via a blog post that Maston has been “exploding” since Elon Musk’s takeover news went live. Eugen Rochko said that hours after the news Mastodon saw “an influx of approx. 41,287 users”, about 30,000 of those were new users. What’s funny in all this, is that Eugen Rochko was inspired to create Mastodon when it was rumored Twitter could be sold to a “controversial billionaire” back in 2016. He also did not like some decisions Twitter was making at the time. That’s how Mastodon came to life. Its iOS app has been around for a while now, while the one for Android launched recently. It is still lacking some features, though, but there are third-party alternatives, such as Tusky.
Interest in both iOS & Android apps boomed since Monday
What’s interesting is that the iOS and Android apps have been downloaded roughly 5,000 times since Monday. That’s actually “nearly 10% of its lifetime total”, so an influx of new users is obvious. It, of course, doesn’t mean that all of those users will continue using the service. Some of them will stay, at least. It will be interesting to see how will Mastodon evolve from this point, but this news definitely did benefit the company. If you’re planning on trying out Mastodon, do note that it’s not a single, centralized service. The interface does look similar to Twitter, but it’s a bit different. Groups of users are free to create and maintain their own “instances”. They’re free to set their own rules around membership, moderation, and other policies. Mastodon (Google Play Store)
