Since the end of 2022, Mastodon has increasingly become a popular alternative to Twitter for millions of users. That’s partly because its CEO and founder, Eugen Rochko, has stressed that the decentralized social network – which operates for profit – will never be bought by a chaotic billionaire.
However, some potential Mastodon users who fled Twitter never seem to have made it through Mastodon’s slightly more complicated sign-up process. Some of them left Mastodon quickly after creating an account and were instantly confused when asked to find a server to join. Because of this unfamiliar extra step, which isn’t required to join most mainstream social networks, Mastodon seemed to have missed a major opportunity to attract and retain Twitter users. Those stakes likely only got higher after top Twitter influencers began affiliating with another Twitter rival called Bluesky.
As Bluesky gained momentum, Mastodon decided to listen to user feedback and take an unexpected step to make its platform more accessible than ever. Now Mastodon will do what social networks traditionally do and by default point users to a server operated by Mastodon when they sign up. Acknowledging that Mastodon’s sign-up process “can be confusing,” Rochko announced that this tweak to Mastodon “removes friction from decentralized features” and makes it “as easy as possible” for new users to “get past the sign-up process and more.” “. connect with others quickly.”
For users attracted to Mastodon for its decentralized structure, which allows users – not companies – to create and manage their own servers, moving from standard users to Mastodon-powered servers seemed counterintuitive. But Rochko wrote that “it’s important for Mastodon to be good as a product on its own merits, not just its ideology,” noting that “if we just attract people who are already interested in decentralization, our ability “Making decentralization mainstream is getting so much harder.”
“This gives us a far better chance to showcase what decentralized social networks have to offer rather than having that person bounce off and never hear from them again,” Rochko wrote, citing the immense growth over the past six months, despite many users had trouble logging in. Rochko confirmed that users can also choose “advanced server selection” upon signup if they are not interested in joining Mastodon’s default servers.
Building on Mastodon’s sudden success
Earlier this year, Mastodon was gaining 1,000 new users per hour. Rochko watched the user count grow to 8 million. Compared to Twitter’s estimated 368 million monthly active users, Mastodon’s growing total user base seems small, but for Mastodon this increase represented a turning point that may have marked a culture shift towards decentralized social networks becoming more mainstream .
As Mastodon grew, investors called. Rochko told the Financial Times he turned down more than five Silicon Valley venture capital firms that had offered to invest “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” While Mastodon is currently willing to compromise by defaulting users to a server it runs, Rochko has never been willing to compromise on the social network’s non-profit status. Instead, Mastodon’s massive growth is primarily funded by more than 8,500 Patreon donors. Donations total a monthly budget of $30,000, Rochko told The Verge in March, and certain senior Patreon supporters are credited as sponsors. Mastodon has also received a limited amount of grants, Rochko told The Verge.
After refusing to sell to investors last month, Rochko posted a blog saying that “without a doubt” Mastodon’s sudden success would “strain” his resources. Of most concern, Mastodon was struggling to “maintain the Mastodon public servers that we maintain ourselves as a non-profit: mastodon.social and mastodon.online.” It’s too early to tell if Mastodon has fixed issues that could cause performance lags as its default servers become overloaded and underfunded as more users join due to the easier sign-up process.
“We have been working non-stop to maintain the quality of service on mastodon.social and mastodon.online, but you may have noticed issues such as: B. confirmation emails not arriving or delayed home feeds,” Rochko wrote. “We apologize for the inconvenience and continue to work to resolve these issues.”
Any inconsistencies in platform performance could be another reason for fair-weather users to abandon the platform.
Ars could not immediately reach Mastodon for comment.
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