In the course of the height of the controversy surrounding Elon Musk’s turbulent acquisition of Twitter last 12 months, social media platform Mastodon emerged because the go-to platform for individuals who want to not associate with the notorious blue bird. But just months later, it seems that Mastodon is seeing its user base drop — by quite loads.
In a way, Mastodon was promoted by users who’re generally anti-Elon Musk as a strategy to interact online without the toxicity of the Tesla CEO or Twitter’s general users. With rumors later flying that Twitter was about to shut down on account of Musk’s mismanagement, the user “exodus” to Mastodon continued.
By December, Mastodon was featured in quite a few mainstream media coverage on account of its rapid rise in users. By late December, reports highlighted that Mastodon’s monthly lively users had exploded to 2.5 million users between the months of October and November. Outstanding people resembling politicians, reporters, and organizations also arrange camp in the brand new social media platform.
But based on Mastodon’s own public API, it seems that the platform has not been in a position to sustain its growth. Over the past two months, Mastodon’s monthly lively users dropped to lower than 1.4 million. This represents a 44% decrease from its highs that were achieved just a few months ago.
As noted in a Thurrott report, the decline of Mastodon’s monthly lively users doesn’t appear to be unexpected in any respect. After rising from 380,000 users to 2.5 million in only two months, Mastodon’s lively users dropped by over 30% the next month.
There could also be a couple of good reasons behind the Mastodon “exodus” that is occurring today. A Wired report highlighted that many newcomers to Mastodon have complained that the platform was difficult to make use of. Add to the proven fact that Elon Musk’s Twitter appears to be finding its footing despite all of the drama from several months ago, and it looks like some users who joined Mastodon to protest the Tesla CEO’s takeover are coming back to Twitter.
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