Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon – but many aren’t sticking around
The number of active users on the Mastodon social network has dropped more than 30% since the peak and is continuing a slow decline, according to the latest data posted on its website. There were about 1.8 million active users in the first week of January, down from over 2.5 million in early December.
Mastodon, an open-source network of largely independently hosted servers, has often been touted as an alternative to Twitter. And its growth appears connected to controversies at Twitter. But for many it doesn’t fulfil the role that Twitter did and experts say it may be too complicated to really replace it.
“Twitter, in its most basic form is simple,” Meg Coffey, a social media strategist, said. “You can open up an app or open up a website, type some words, and you’re done. I mean, it was [a] basic SMS platform.”
There were about 500,000 active Mastodon users before Elon Musk took control of Twitter at the end of October. By mid-November, that number climbed to almost 2 million active users.
“Right around that 5 November, it was a real opportunity,” Coffey said. “There were a lot of people who were scared, a lot of people who … didn’t want to be in the place Twitter was becoming.
“I’m big about mute and block … and so my Twitter is fantastic. It’s a really wonderful place. But I know for a lot of other people it’s not. And so I can understand that they wanted to find a place that is less toxic or less harmful.”
The surge in new Mastodon users continued throughout November, peaking at over 130,000 new users a day. The upticks often coincided with controversial decisions made by Elon Musk.
