Social media, more than almost any other corner of business, is a winner-takes-all endeavour. We gravitate towards whichever platform has the most users. We bring more friends with us. Monopolies arise, and pretenders are crushed. The history of social media is littered with corpses; it is an elephant's graveyard.
Enter Mastodon, inauspiciously named for the extinct elephantine mammal. Like Twitter, Mastodon is a microblogging site, and as such, Twitter users will find many aspects of Mastodon familiar. In the place of tweets, for instance, we have "toots". An apter term there could hardly be for a brief emission of hot air.
There has been a surge of interest in Mastodon. Eugen Rochko, its founder, CEO and sole full-time employee, reports that the site has surpassed 1 million daily active users. Independent analysis tells the same story. Mastodon is on the rise, and it's all happened since Elon Musk took over Twitter.
The world's richest man has owned Twitter for little more than a fortnight. In that time, he has laid off around half of the company's 7,500 workers and begun a chaotic overhauling of the blue-tick system that currently divides users into, as he put it, "peasants and lords". Twitter's content moderation will also be overhauled, Musk has said. "One thing is for sure," he tweeted last week, "it isn't boring!"
It hasn't been boring, but it's been a bit much for some users. These are the ones who find Musk exasperating, have gone to Mastodon rather than pay him £8 a month for the ambiguous subscription service Twitter Blue, and have come back to Twitter to tweet about it. How representative are these Disgusteds of Twitter dot com? I put the question to Axel Bruns, an Australian media professor.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 15, 2022-Ausgabe von The Independent.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 15, 2022-Ausgabe von The Independent.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Bank holds fire but there is good news for homeowners
Here’s the good news: a rate cut in either July or August can probably be characterised as a racing certainty.
BoE holds interest rates at 5.25% despite hopes of cut
Homeowners hoping for a drop in their mortgage repayments will be disappointed by the Bank of England's decision to keep the base rate on hold.
El Kaabi strikes again as Villa limp out of Europe
Olympiacos won 6-2 on aggregate
'Banter era' United can still hobble Arsenal's title chase
It’s got to the point where, after nights like Monday, Erik ten Hag doesn’t really know what to say any more.
How do Real Madrid keep creating European magic?
“It’s something unexplainable,” Carlo Ancelotti said, more than once, on a night when he could have been talking about any number of elements.
Passengers injured as 737 skids off runway in Senegal
Passengers were left terrified after a Boeing 737 plane skidded off the runway at Senegal’s main airport causing 10 people to be injured.
Russia's Victory Day parade features single tank... again
Lone T-34 accompanied by armoured vehicles in Red Square
Daniels denies claims she made up Trump sex story
Over two hours of fierce cross-examination from Donald Trump’s legal team yesterday, Stormy Daniels fought off attacks designed to undermine her credibility and cast her as a liar and opportunist.
UN envoy says world can't ignore Sudan's 'silent war'
Human Rights Watch alleges genocide was likely committed
The split between Biden and Netanyahu is widening
There has never been any love lost between President Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but until this week, one could usually say with high confidence that their dysfunctional personal relationship would take a backseat to the historic alliance between the US and Israel.