Last year Mastodon went through a hype cycle. Everyone was declaring Twitter over. You had people stating they were leaving for good, dual-posting, etc. Funnily enough many of those same people are back on Twitter today with little mention of Mastodon.
It peaked in November and then went into decline. As people leave, the value of the network goes down so even more people leave.
Musk's antics might prop it up every once in a while but the long term trend doesn't look good. My prediction is in a couple of years time, the only remaining users will be the most avid hardcore fans.
It’s so funny to me watching everyone debate about what is or isn’t going to be the next ultimate single massive platform.
I, and many Fediverse people, are on the Fedi explicitly hoping it isn’t in that list. Mastodon is a success to me because of the thousands of people on it and that I interact with, and that it is precisely not containing the masses.
So many people think we need another Reddit and Twitter. Many of us however are looking for exactly something not Reddit or Twitter.
Mastodon and Lemmy/etc are a smash success to me. They have more traffic, users and activity than the other comparable options combined (citation needed). And most importantly, they did it without becoming the next big thing.
Plus if, god forbid, it does become the next big thing - It can still isolate and be a small forum. That alone is lovely to me.
The Mastodon "hype cycle" was jam packed with people saying "this isn't it"[1]. The choice of server, account migration issues (partly resolved), and just some aesthetic reasons made it obvious it wasn't going to be the thing. There was a strong, I would say majority sentiment that everyone was waiting for some more Twitter-like competitor.
"Everyone was declaring Twitter over."
I mean...Twitter is very much over. References to Twitter, or Twitter being the canonical source, has utterly disappeared. Whole media spheres have made Twitter just another place, not the place. Whole fields have dried up on Twitter.
If you're hardcore into culture wars, Twitter is probably your place. Probably feels as alive as ever. In virtually any other field (sports, media, tech), while some people with big accounts are still trying to hang on -- for obvious reasons as other platforms just set them back -- engagement and "the crowd" has absolutely dissolved. Governments, agencies and groups used Twitter as a public space, and not only have many pulled back, I cannot fathom anyone making that choice today.
And that doesn't mean one needs to cite where someone replaced their "Twitter-like" activity. Many people just took it as an opportunity to assess the joy that sort of site was bringing them and decoupled. In the same way that the decline of blogger didn't mean that other sites grew the same amount...many people just stopped blogging.
[1] isn't it for a "general public, all topics" solution. Mastodon absolutely is a technical solution for niche spaces and groups and is absolutely flourishing in those realms.
> It (mastodon) peaked in November. Musk's antics might prop it (Mastodon) up every once in a while but the long term trend doesn't look good.
At least that's what I think you mean. Lots of ambiguous "it" in the text above.
Not accurate according to https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/ or my subjective experience. mastodon is fine. mastodon is growing. Mastodon is fundamentally not a business that needs to "get big fast or die trying" so that VCs can make their big ROI back. Slow, steady improvement is fine. Scalloped growth is not evidence of a platform in decline. (1)
I'd say - to write the above in a clearer way: "Twitter peaked in November 2022 and then went into decline. Musk's antics might prop twitter up every once in a while but the long term trend doesn't look good. My prediction is in a couple of years time, the only remaining users of twitter will be the most avid hardcore fans."
People keep claiming this but it isn’t reality. Not one of the programmers I follow have posted on mastodons in the last couple of months.
There was a huge rush of most of the people I follow going to mastodon. But even those who still has their mastodons links in their name or profile haven’t posted in months.
The fact is that discussions happen on Twitter. Not mastodon.
Saying "Not one of the programmers I follow have posted on mastodons in months" we can't argue with, I don't know who those people are, that's your subjective experience and YMMV, you do you.
But this is not my subjective experience actually. And yes I follow "programmers" and other IT people in the mix. I'm not here to tell you what's true _for you_ but you appear to be telling me that what I experience isn't "reality". On the contrary, it works fine for me, as I said above.
"Discussions happen only on X not Y" is a binary, absolutist, black or white thinking. If taken literally, it is ridiculous. I suppose you would also say that this here isn't a discussion, because that's "only on twitter"?
Discussions and communities are going to happen in different places. It's almost like there's a use for a protocol that lets them interoperate in some kind of "loose association".
It did peak in December last year, but then it "declined" and stabilized at more than double the active users it had before Elon bought Twitter: https://mastodon-analytics.com/
That chart is missing the big late-june/early-july burst that came when Twitter locked out non-registered users and put a cap on read tweets. Big bump in new registrations and since then activity has been up a bunch as well. Not as big as December, but mostly because it was short lived.
> ...As people leave, the value of the network goes down so even more people leave...
But, i would posit that there is a rhetorical currency exchange at play here. The "value" that one might assign to a silo like Facebook or Threads is not the same "value" one might assign to various software stacks and/or networks on the Fediverse. Like, its not enough for me to state that they're different/like comparing apples vs oranges. I mean, for example, if I only have a single kid/offspring, does that mean that i have not grown the "value" of my family, because i have not maximized my partner's reproductive capabilities, or resorted to adoption to extend that, etc.? That's sill of course. Well, i assure you, the intent of networks on the Fediverse is NOT the same as the goals and intent of silos like Facebook, twitter, threads, etc.
I think @unshavedyak stated it great with their comments, but this is my favorite of theirs: "...So many people think we need another Reddit and Twitter. Many of us however are looking for exactly something not Reddit or Twitter..."
It peaked in November and then went into decline. As people leave, the value of the network goes down so even more people leave.
Musk's antics might prop it up every once in a while but the long term trend doesn't look good. My prediction is in a couple of years time, the only remaining users will be the most avid hardcore fans.