With Twitter Crashing, Will Mastodon Become The Next Big Microblogging Site?

In case you haven’t noticed, Twitter has been on a downward spiral ever since Elon Musk acquired the microblogging platform on 27 October, 2022. Users who considered Twitter one of the world’s largest free speech sites likened the acquisition to being trapped in a cage where only one person held the key.

The company has also since lost half of its workforce in major restructuring moves, including the infamous $8 blue check mark that allowed anonymous individuals to make spoof accounts of big name companies, much to the detriment of the stock market.?

More than half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers, who have spent over US$2.55 billion on the platform since 2020, have completely pulled advertising campaigns off the microblogging platform.

Suffice to say, everyday users, corporations, and Twitter’s largest revenue generator — its advertisers, aren’t in a rush to return to the platform. Some analysts are even saying that this may be the beginning of the demise of social media as we know it.

So what is Mastodon, and how can it replace Twitter?

Named after an extinct variety of mammoth, Mastodon is an outlier in the social media space dominated by platforms where user data is sold to advertisers who then flood feeds with hyper-specific sponsored content. Instead of ruthless business owners, Mastodon operates across thousands of computer servers run by volunteer administrators who are interested in one common goal — returning control over the internet to its users.

Built by German programmer Eugen Rochko in 2016, Mastodon currently has a little over 1 million monthly active users. While that number is still a far cry from Twitter’s 436 million active users, the impressive part comes in when you zoom in on how fast they’ve been growing lately. Prior to late 2022, Mastodon was seeing 60 to 80 new accounts made every hour. But ever since Twitter famously changed hands, that number has multiplied manifold to reach over 3,500 per hour.

How Mastodon’s open-source, nonprofit structure works

Mastodon’s basic structure more closely resembles discord rather than the average social media website. Clicking on the create account link on the home page takes you to a list of servers (known as instances) run by volunteer moderators who may consist of individuals, groups, or organisations. And unlike other social media platforms with rules that apply for pages across the board, Mastodon moderators are free to set their own rules on sign ups and moderation policies, allowing for spaces here to be tailored for the specific needs of each community. For instance, some servers are free for all to join, while others are invite-only or require approval by an administrator.

This means that if you sign up for a server for tech professionals, moderators may request for proof of employment, qualification, or skills to confirm that you are indeed genuine. Not every server is that intense, of course. New users won’t have to worry about limiting their options from the get-go, either. Just as Gmail users can connect with Outlook users, server members can freely communicate with members of other instances unless they’ve specifically been blocked.

Content on Mastodon and the Fediverse is owned by you

And that’s not all. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, an interconnected web of various social media services (which in turn is part of the growing decentralised web). One Mastodon account is enough to grant you to contact users in other decentralised social media networks, all while letting them know that you belong to a specific, established community.?

Even if you decide that Mastodon, or the Mastodon server that you’ve created, no longer serves your purposes, you can always transfer the followers from one account to another instead of being forced to start from scratch.?

In other words, Mastodon allows individuals and organisations to truly own their social media presence and do as they please with it. It’s the new, transparent way to identify yourself on the internet without giving up your information to big corporate giants. Considering how much mainstream social media networks have come under fire in recent years, we just might be at the cusp of a major generational shift.?

Finally, being a nonprofit, open-source website means that Mastodon is also far less likely to be completely overwritten and modified if an Elon-esque owner buys over the company one day. Anyone can download, modify, and install Mastodon on their own server — plus, the developers of the platform don’t own the copyright.

Are open-source social media good professional networking tools?

Of course, Mastodon still has many kinks to iron out. For one, its processes are not as sleek as Twitter’s. Reddit users are already complaining about the site’s speed. And given its relatively small user base, networks on Mastodon, let alone professional ones, are far less established. So while people have been building their portfolios and landing major tech jobs on Twitter for the longest time, you may be hard pressed to find work opportunities on this site, at least with large corporations.

However, considering Twitter developers have also jumped aboard the Mastodon ship, so these problems might be resolved sooner than later.

Getting on Mastodon now also means that you’ll be an early adopter, with much less competition to establish your personal brand and standing within particular communities before servers become too saturated.?

And just in case Mastodon isn’t your thing, there are literally hundreds of (currently) free, open-source websites such as Diaspora and Hive. If there was ever a good time to start exploring, now would be it.?

We’ll be covering more topics on the latest web developments and how you can take advantage of them to further your career in tech, so stay up to date with the latest insights to prepare yourself for future twists and turns in the global economy. Follow the TTAB page to get first-dibs on these updates, and get more exclusive, first-hand insights from industry experts by joining the TTAB Career Conversation.