The social networking site is in a crisis. The service has lost more than half its staff through layoffs and quitting, made erratic moves in its product and platform strategies, and is facing up to reports about its financial state.
The emergence of a plethora of alternatives has been the result of the disruption in the tech industry.
Mastodon is a network created on the ActivityPub protocol that allows others to join and establish their own server to engage with and see each others content.
According to the creator of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko, the service now has 2.5 million monthly active users, and has 8,600 different server locations. The largest of these, mastodon.social, has 881,000 registered users and 210,000 active users.
Mastodon's server has been shut down for new sign ups. He described it as a victimless decision because there are so many other places to register an account. The move has created a curious scarcity/demand situation, with people and organizations asking for access to get accounts on his server.
Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko talks funding and how to build the anti-Twitter
The main reason that the registration is closed right now is that it's a big burden to the DevOps to scale up beyond the number of users we have now. I would rather not say that the software is not good enough to scale. It isn't really the reason, it's just a question of not having a dedicated employee. I can't run everything. It is easier to close registration and make sure that the people who are already on there have a good quality of service, instead of allowing more people to sign up. I have to stay up and fix things.
It is kind of a victimless decision to sign up on a server that has lots of other others to choose from.
He is looking at the next steps for his surgery.
Mastodon as it currently exists is set up as a not-for-profit organization, financed for the most part by a Patreon account that Rochko set up that currently brings in $31,000 each month.
Mastodon will remain not-for-profit, but it is looking at a split model where the nonprofit will continue working on the core product, which will remain open source.
He said that the goal is to be a sustainable and fair business. We will allow you to take your data and move it to your own hosting provider in the future or migrate from another hosting provider.
There are no plans to include ads in the hosted service. He doesn't dismiss them completely but he seems to come out of his own feelings about them.
He said that the network's diversity has to be considered. The same ActivityPub protocol could be used for another platform, but with completely different software and different features. It's possible that they could build ads into it.
Would you use a service that has ads and keeps track of your interests and location to make those ads effective? Is it better to go to another one that doesn't have that? The ad business is not something Mastodon is interested in. It's free and open source so anyone can modify it. They wouldn't do it at their own risk.
He left it open to the operators of Mastodon, but he favors something similar to what Musk has proposed.
He thinks that the framework for building social media networks is similar to that of a separate social network. It makes sense that they would be able to explore different business models with interoperability built in straight away. The paid accounts model is probably the most fair model that can be found in the system. In the past App.net tried to do this but it didn't work out. It was unclear if that was because of the paid account part or if they didn't build out a good flagship product.
It seems that a lot of people who want to give him money don't understand what he's trying to do, with one recurring theme being the idea of further commercializing the platform.
I have ignored them before, but now we have Felix, who is a CFO, but he doesn't have the title officially. He said that he forwards those to him and then he tries to talk with them. We have been trying to talk to some VCs about the hosting business. They are interested in getting into the main product and not so interested in sustainable hosting. They aren't going to help here. They aren't allowed into the main product. I don't know if personal funds would be enough, but we're probably going to have to go with an angel investor or something. That is unclear.
A new Musk-era rule banning links to competing social networks was triggered by Mastodon because it picked up attention in the wake of the drama.
The way it is approaching the social space is interesting.
Mastodon is based on an open source, "federated" concept, where different server use the same protocol to speak to each other and share content; server operators watch the activity of the users registered and hosted on their respective server
It might seem a little confusing to the uninitiated, but there are tools out there that can help you import your world over to Mastodon and keep the same experience.
The server becomes like a herd of animals if you follow the metaphor. Mastodon is still alive and well, and a number of other social media platforms are also considering open source.
It seems that Mastodon has really hit a nerve. The average number of downloads for the platform's mobile apps is 4,000 a day, but at one point there were 149,000 downloads on the platform's mobile phones.
The spike took place over the course of a few days when the company announced a huge swathe of job cuts that wiped out entire departments, including those working on moderation, security and curation.
The inverse variation is playing out very well for the latter at the moment.
Is it going to last? The ups and downs of the platform have been a hallmark of the company, so much so that many have wondered if it is a utility, not a business.
It has remained and grown. Although this latest bout has felt like the last straw for many, only time will tell if users eventually accept the new status quo or if meaningful change in social platforms really is coming.
Sometimes it takes years for tech to evolve, but other times it happens in a day or two.
The financial aspect is something that continues to hover over Mastodon.
It has been a part of the company's growth. The only full-time employee of Mastodon is Rochko, but there are five other people working on the server who are not full-time. To figure out how to bring on more people in a stable way is one of the focuses.
The $31,000 per month he makes through Patreon is not really enough, nor stable enough, to finance a staff, Rochko said, but he has been thinking about a secondary level of business to generate a more stable income for the business.
He said that he is the only full-time employee and that five others are contractors. I am looking to expand the team and work on some job listings. It takes a long time. I would like to do it a lot quicker. The company has been a one person venture for six years. It has been okay so far but we need more people.
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