Mastodon’s microblogging app noticed a file variety of downloads after Musk’s Twitter takeover

There are indicators of a small however rising Twitter exodus underway following Elon Musk’s closure of the deal to purchase the social media platform final Thursday. Whereas many Twitter customers are taking a wait-and-see method and will not have absolutely deleted their accounts right now, a large variety of individuals are at present testing Twitter alternate options. A type of alternate options is Mastodon, a decentralized social community that gained greater than 70,000 new sign-ups on Friday, the day after the Musk Twitter takeover accomplished. And this weekend, the official Mastodon cell app noticed a file variety of downloads as extra individuals fleeing Twitter started to hunt out a brand new on-line dwelling.

Mastodon, to be clear, is just not a brand new platform. The free and open supply microblogging service debuted in March 2016, providing a unique method to on-line social networking. Just like Twitter, you possibly can comply with different customers and create posts that may be preferred and retweeted (or “tooted,” in Mastodon lingo), use hashtags, share media and extra. However not like Twitter, Mastodon is a distributed social community the place customers join on particular person servers, or nodes, every with its personal theme, guidelines, language and moderation coverage. As an illustration, the most well-liked server at present is mastodon.social, touting 817,219 customers. A Japanese server pawoo.net is simply behind that with some 766,399 users.

Customers can usually view content material and work together with individuals on different servers, excluding any servers within the “fediverse” — the group of interconnected, or federated, servers — that their very own server admin has banned.

Mastodon works on the internet or cell, together with by means of native cell apps. Along with the primary Mastodon cell consumer, there’s a protracted record of third-party shoppers to select from, too, with names like Tootle, Metatext, Mast, tooot, Toot!, Mastoot, Twidere X, Mercury for Mastodon, Tootoise, Tootter for Mastodon, Stella and extra.

There have been already indicators final week that Mastodon was benefiting from the chaos and concern that’s accompanied the chaotic change in Twitter’s possession.

On Friday, the hashtag #mastodon began trending and many individuals have been tweeting #TwitterMigration as they ready to make the shift to the open supply service. Even upfront of the Twitter sale, some have been testing Mastodon, famous Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s founder and lead developer. He stated that 18,000 individuals signed up for Mastodon accounts within the week main as much as the Twitter sale (October 20 to October 27), Wired reported on the time.

On Friday, Mastodon shared that quantity had elevated by fairly a bit: Greater than 70,000 individuals signed up for a Mastodon account on that day alone (October 28). (Rochko later noted the determine was really 70,849, up from 10,801 the day prior.)

This inflow of latest customers additionally helped increase the Mastodon cell app. As of Friday afternoon, the app had jumped to No. 38 within the Social Networking class on the U.S. App Retailer, information from app intelligence agency Sensor Tower indicated. This was the app’s highest rank since April 27, 2022 when it had ranked No. 37 — shortly after Musk made his initial offer to buy Twitter, prompting the primary Twitter exodus. The very best rank the app had ever seen then was No. 31 on April 26, 2022.

That’s since modified, Sensor Tower tells us. The app has now moved as much as No. 21 within the Social Networking class on the U.S. App Retailer, topping its earlier excessive.

It additionally noticed probably the most installs ever in a single day on Saturday, October 29, with 34,000 new downloads throughout each iOS and Android that day. And, over the previous three days (October 28-30) the app has seen round 91,000 new installs, Sensor Tower says. That’s up 658% in comparison with the 12,000 installs from the prior three days (October 25-27). It’s additionally a large chunk of the lifetime installs the app has seen up to now, which now complete 489,000 throughout iOS and Android. Germany is Mastodon’s largest market with 37% of installs, adopted by the U.S. with 19% and Japan with 7%.

Nonetheless, regardless of breaking data, Mastodon’s cell app hasn’t but damaged into the High Total iPhone apps on the U.S. App Retailer. That might be as a result of Mastodon has such a protracted tail of third-party shoppers that some app downloads from new customers are being siphoned away from the primary app and directed elsewhere. For instance, the Mastodon app MetaText jumped up 14 positions in its rating within the Social Networking class, whereas Mercury moved up three ranks. Neither are all that sizable, although, with Social Networking class ranks of 469 and 1,295, respectively. 

There’s little question this speedy progress in Mastodon app downloads is instantly tied to the Musk Twitter takeover. Nonetheless, Mastodon’s progress isn’t the one signal that some Twitter customers are abandoning the platform.

Twitter developer accomplice Tweepsmap, a Twitter analytics supplier, noticed a barely larger than ordinary drop within the variety of “unfollows” on the platform amongst a pattern dimension of 400,000 Twitter customers on Friday, October 28 — or about 30% larger than the standard Friday common. This might sign a considerably larger variety of customers have been deactivating their accounts than is common, resulting in them “unfollowing” different customers consequently.

The one different sample Tweepsmap may detect was that liberal-leaning accounts had larger than ordinary losses, with a follower drop of < 0.2% — a decline that’s not vital within the grand scheme of issues, but in addition not fully negligible, both, the corporate instructed us. That might possible correlate with the sorts of Twitter customers who need to exit a Musk-led platform, however it’s nonetheless sufficiently small of an exit to probably not harm Twitter at current.

Within the meantime, Rochko posted that he’s bought extra highly effective {hardware} to improve Mastodon’s database server given the inflow of customers has led to processing delays, and famous he’s been working 12- to 14-hour days in gentle of the current progress. Not like Twitter, Mastodon doesn’t make billions from promoting — it’s supported by people and organizations, typically from their very own pocket, and by consumer donations. (So when you’re amongst these fleeing Twitter, consider stepping up.)

The curiosity in Mastodon has now led to the most well-liked server, mastodon.social, experiencing outages. The group knowledgeable us it has gained 123,562 new customers as of October 27, 2022 and now has 528,607 energetic customers on the community as of October 31, 2022.

Replace, 11/1/2022, 3:20 PM ET so as to add details about the outage and new metrics from Mastodon.