Comment by encom
11 hours ago
Of course, if you move the goalposts far enough you can say any result is a success. Mastodon looks to have around 800k active users. For comparison IRC has (according to netsplit.de) around 280k users. Is that successful?
Mastodon has more users than HN. It's a success. It's also unlikely to go away. Well, OK, it may go away if BlueSky ever becomes decentralized in practice. If that doesn't happen, the only "threat" to Mastodon is some other federated, decentralized service.
It's been around long enough that it has reached steady state. Existing (active) users are happy with its architecture, and are not concerned with discoverability, etc. Why would they leave?
>Mastodon looks to have around 800k active users. For comparison IRC has (according to netsplit.de) around 280k users. Is that successful?
Yes.
Bear in mind many people here would consider geminispace to be a success and I seriously doubt that it even has 100k users.
"Success" has valid definitions beyond market capture and revenue. Mastodon is a success because it hosts a community and because it represents a validation of the model of decentralized federated social media.
And it isn't a zero-sum game, either. The entire point is that there doesn't have to be one "Twitter" one "Facebook" one "Youtube," or even one protocol to rule them all.