Mastodon, a decentralised social media network, made headlines almost immediately after Elon Musk completed his Twitter takeover, but it’s not the only social media site that has seen an increase in subscribers since the multibillionaire took control.
According to recent data, some smaller social media sites have seen an increase in users, while others, such as Tumblr, are returning to traditional social media platforms.
According to SensorTower statistics, Mastodon received around 322,000 downloads in the 12 days after the purchase, which is 100 times higher than it saw in the 12 days before Musk’s takeover.
Third-party applications that may be used in conjunction with Mastodon, such as Tootle and Metatext, have also seen a significant spike in downloads worldwide, with Metatext increasing from fewer than 1,000 installations to almost 20,000.
Tumblr, a still frequently used but ultimately more historical social networking site, recorded 301,000 post-acquisition downloads compared to 170,000 for the same time before.
In addition, smaller sites like CounterSocial have expanded – SensorTower claims the young platform received 33,000 global installations in the 12-day period after acquisition, a 3,200 per cent increase.
In other rival news, former Twitter CEO and creator Jack Dorsey’s new Bluesky social media app, which is a decentralised take on social networks like Mastodon, just completed its first round of beta testing, which began in late October.
With other social media platforms acquiring new users by the day, Twitter’s user base has shifted as well – mostly away from the platform.
According to Bot Sentinel, which checks and analyses Twitter accounts, 877,000 accounts were terminated and 497,000 were suspended between October 27 and November 1.
This is about twice the typical amount of cancelled and suspended accounts. In the week before Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, just 5,958 accounts were cancelled or suspended, indicating a 208% surge in the aftermath of the transaction.
According to Sensortower statistics, between October 27 and November 7, after the transaction was completed, Twitter was downloaded 7.6 million times from the App Store and Google Play.
Although not as large as corporations often included under the “big tech” umbrella, Twitter’s appeal as a key mode of communication among politicians, entertainers, and other public figures is – and has nearly always been – unequalled.
This has given the social media platform a near-unquantifiable impact on global politics, considerably above what would be expected based on its income (or indeed, consecutive years of losses).
The political consequences of such a collapse would be enormous. However, it is unlikely to happen due to a lack of users on the platform, which will not go below the hundreds of millions, despite the plethora of alternatives emerging from the woodwork.
While the thought of Twitter failing due to user abandonment is unlikely, the firm being pushed to bankruptcy (which, according to Musk, it is virtually already) or embroiled in a major legal crisis is not.
It is impossible to forecast what Twitter will look like in five years; it is much more difficult to predict what Twitter will look like one year from now. With Elon at the wheel, practically any outcome – good or horrible – is possible.
