As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch

I'm sure there were a huge swath of people who used Twitter and didn't care at all about Musk one way or the other.

Then he rebranded and threw his ego and control in everyone's face. And all the people who like Twitter IN SPITE of Elon were now forced to acknowledge that their Twitter is gone.

Just like over at reddit now, the latest move has alienated the people who really cared about the platform itself. If they rebranded to "Spez's World", though, a lot of the people who didn't give a shit before would suddenly be ready to bail.

He has so thoroughly ruined Twitter that you can't help but wonder if that was his goal from the outset.

Is this migration already called xit? Because it should..

It’s not the rebrand that’s killing Twitter. Elon is. He’s proving to himself that he cannot, in fact, run Twitter better than the prior owners.

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Cool, but the article is from July 24th

Just deleted my Twitter account. Of course, the app gave nothing but errors so I had to do it on desktop, but it’s done!

Twitter under Elon looks similar to the UK under Brexit.

I find Mastodon very stuffy and boring, is there a way to shake up my feed? I feel like I'm missing something about how the app works.

It’s not just lemmy that’s benefiting from Elon Musk.

Whether its lemmy or mastodon, or kbin that grows, we're all benefiting. That's the beauty of federation.

I wanted to use mastodon, but I haven't even used twitter in years, so then I realized I just don't social media that way anymore (or much at all for that matter).

Lemmy would be soaring too if it weren't for terrible database code allowing for easy ddos.

Can we have something nice here please? I miss when the internet was nice, and you were allowed to talk to each other about whatever you wanted.

TRON FIGHTS FOR THE USER!

There were stories that Tesla had a team in place to distract Elon any time he showed up to the office, and I absolutely believe that. Now that Elon has Twitter to distract him, I wonder what that team is up to.

Fuck spez. Why isn't he doing more psycho shit like Elon so he can move more people to Lemmy.

Apparently, as a competitor of any major platform you just need to get close to the features your adversary has and wait for that site/service to start the process of enshittification, let's see if reddit makes more blunders

I've been trying to stick to Mastodon and ditch Twitter, but honestly, even though I've gotten into the habit of using Mastodon every day, it's pretty hard for me to resist accepting information from Twitter.

I am so annoyed that Twitter got ruined.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like Twitter. I don't follow anyone on Twitter. But if I had no other recourse I could complain about a corporation that wasn't paying any attention to me and they would do something about it.

By the way fuck FedEX. Is there a place on mastadon I can bitch about FedEx? I have had a mis-delivered package sitting on my porch for over a month. I call about every three or four days and tell them, pick up your package so it can go to the right place. They say they will get it. They never do.

Never use FedEx.

I like the idea of referring to it only as "The social media site formerly known as Twitter" from here on out.

Musk trashed Twitter with intent, by design, and on purpose. Elon Musk is worth 95 Billion more now than when he bought Twitter.

The continued forced cognitive dissonance is the grandest example of info_corpo_kabuki i've ever seen. It's all just so fucking dumb.

Elon bought it to trash it so he could have access to Saudi markets for his electric cars and rocket ships. The face he's a fascist fucking cunt who gets to stick it to liberals where they most liked to exchange news, information and organize online was just a bonus for him.

That is right baby. The Fedi is a life raft always waiting to scoop people up.

Honestly, I joined Twitter begrudgingly in 2015 after ignoring it for years only because I thought it might be easy to keep up with some interesting news before it hit Reddit.. and it worked for a while...

Now, I just wonder why I'm still there at all.

I also don't.see why I might want a mastodon account at this point though... I don't feel like I need a replacement for something that I never really liked...

There's an ethical consideration when you sell a company. Dorsey and co. took a big payout and this is the result. I was thinking earlier about how this probably wouldn't have been happened if you had an even equity split across the company's employees.

idk why but I felt the need to remind everyone

Why are people so fucking addicted to Twitter? It's just people posting a few sentences about shit I see on the Internet already. But what do I know, I've gone my entire life without using the stupid shit. Maybe I'm not taking into account how many people want to be internet celebrities with their parroted tweets and recycled jokes. Why is it so hard to make another site where dumbass celebrities can feed 2 lines to the drooling masses?

that's cool. The Masto instance I've been on for the last half year is no longer available and I'll have to start over because I didn't have a main and a back up account like I ended up with on Lemmy, but sure, that's alright. I have no idea what happened, the instance still has a blank page up, but it ain't Mastodon.

I was finally feeling moved in but now, kaput.

I don't think this thing was really ready for absolutely everyone on Twitter to bail onto it, is the problem. I don't think it was ever supposed to be. It was always supposed to be like a clubhouse for people who didn't mind being the dweebs of the internet.

Good, isn't this what people want? Twitter to shut down? I've been hoping he just closes up shop and gets rid of it.

I'm starting to believe Elon never cared about twitter. He only bought the userbase and is doing whatever with it. That's sad. Twitter is just not what it once was.

The term soaring is pretty relative in this case. It's still completely unknown to the majority of the world. It's just like Lemmy, where the very few rigid types that absolutely couldn't stand for one particular thing that happened to their social network will do anything, including cutting their nose off to spite their face rather than continue to use it. That's why we're all here and it's why nobody else but us are coming.

Someone in an unrelated discussion, wrote on LinkedIn that blackberry was profitable and grew for a few years after iPhone was anounced. The same for blockbuster after Netflix came to business. Then he was asking on what technologies today will be obsolete because an iPhone has emerged. For me lemmy or mastodon although slow but slowly will eat the competitors as they develop.

For me I am still reading Reddit since lots of information is there. But I am avoiding on participating there.

Good, Twitter is a disgrace to humanity

my engagement rates on mastodon and bluesky have been significantly higher than twitter despite having 1/5 the number of followers

I don’t think I cared about Twitter, the entire duration of its existence, and now there’s a whole new thing that’s apparently the same and I still don’t care about

if there was (more) portuguese content in mastodon I'd move to it

Does anyone have figures on subscription hikes to other fediverse systems? Mastodon is probably the best like-for-like switch for casual birdsite fans, but I wonder if there's also an emerging desire for something a little different.

Thank you Elon ❤️ 🤣🤣

Any android app recommendations? I'm yet to use Mastodon.

I made a mastodon account but there aren't as many meme feeds on mastodon.

Haven't used my twitter account in probably close to a decade or so but I still can't find a use for mastodon either.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

As Twitter ditches its iconic branding in favor of owner Elon Musk’s favorite letter “X,” its open source rival Mastodon is seeing usage numbers soar.

According to a new post from Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko, the number of monthly active users for his Twitter alternative has been steadily climbing over the past couple of months to have now reached 2.1 million — or, as remarked Rochko, “not far off from our last peak.”

Meta’s recently launched Twitter rival known as Instagram Threads has committed to integrating with ActivityPub, which may have raised awareness around Mastodon and decentralized social networking in general.

Musk claimed that Twitter needed to change the rate limits to deal with a significant increase in bots and spam.

Or perhaps, it’s a combination of both of these things and more, including the momentum created by the launches of polished third-party Mastodon clients that have made using the social network less complicated and more enjoyable.

Other Mastodon apps like Ice Cubes and the no-frills client Radiant have also debuted, while Mastodon’s official mobile app received a refresh of its own earlier this month, aimed at addressing various pain points and adding more customization options.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Soaring? 2.1M users is soaring? I'm all for the Fediverse, but it will never reach mainstream social media numbers, and honestly I hope it doesn't.

How's bluechew or whatever, I still haven't gotten an invite

I root for Mastodon like everyone else but as long as there is some very good improvement in discoverability and intelligent feeds, it will never be the same in function as Twitter (not X, Twitter). Especially when it currently has a fraction of the creators Twitter had.

These platforms always been here? So not really a down side to Elon here, gives users a taste of the wider internet?

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Good.

Is there a need to have a lemmy and Mastodon?

Nice

It won't last unless Mastadon gets some serious improvements. It's buggy, glitchy, feature-poor, and confusing to use. There's no way in its current state it's going to compete with the big guys for the average person's attention.

And the award for the worst rebranding decision goes to Elon.

Still waiting for my friends to make the switch so I can delete this shite.

Or I might just delete it anyway and maybe they'll take notice and move. 😂

I think also some people from certain generations are just confused by it. Don't want to deal with it.

Do you guys remember when I ordered that salad and when they brought it out, it was really really big.

Xport to

IMO X is shorter, easier to say and cooler. I like it!

Twitter, Tumblr and Bluesky seem to fill the Twitter void for me fairly well, as I am mostly participating in the Furry and Sonic communities which are some of the first to move to these platforms.

There's like 300 active users here. Just don't talk about piracy. Weaks

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Sure they are xP