It seems that not everyone is willing to deal with the turbulent changes brought about by Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter.
Many users have been searching out effective alternatives, preparing for the end of the Twitterverse as they know it.
While TikTok and Instagram boast popularity, these are mainly image and video-based platforms and do not offer the text-based system that sets Twitter apart.
However, a nonprofit social media website founded in 2016 is beginning to present itself as a possible substitute.
Twitter Users Migrate to Mastodon
Although Mastodon has been around for some time, its number of accumulated users has skyrocketed the past few days and the ongoing Twitter controversies seem to stand behind this migration.
Since Musk’s takeover on October 27, Mastodon’s mobile app has been downloaded a total of 750,000 times worldwide as of November 6. This is an enormous leap compared to the previous two weeks with only 14,000 downloads.
Ironically, Twitter’s new rival is also currently trending on Twitter.
While this may indicate that Twitter users have had enough, it also begs the question of whether Mastodon will be able to carry the torch.
Mastodon as a Potential Twitter Alternative
At first glance, Mastodon does offer similar services to Twitter, although the way it works is slightly more complex.
As Mastodon is a decentralized social advertising site, when creating an account users choose a server that will generate their profile’s address. Regardless of their server, users are still able to communicate with other users from different servers.
It also may take a while to get used to the new lingo, as what is known as “retweets” are referred to as “boosts” on Mastodon, while “tweets” themselves are “toots”.
Unlike Twitter’s homepage, Mastodon has home, local and federated timelines due to the different servers it has.
The Home Timeline is most similar to Twitter’s classic homepage. A Local Timeline refers to a homepage that shows posts from all people using the same server, while a Federated Timeline contains all public posts from users that people on the same server follow.
Is Mastadon Here to Stay?
Mastodon is currently offering Twitter users what they may miss from the platform in the time after Musk’s takeover: the ability to customize and enjoy their user experience.
On the other hand, the app is years behind Twitter in some of its capabilities.
Its options for posting media are limited compared to that of Twitter, verification buttons don’t exist and the userbase is still quite small.
Whether Mastodon can handle this pressure is still in question as Twitter users migrate to its new rival.
The service has shown stalls with the increase of new users, bringing into question whether it can handle the userbase that Twitter easily seems to carry.
As the Twitter saga develops, it may be worth looking into what one social media channel offers compared to the other... and what to do if Twitter flies away?
