The news of celebrities, influencers, and the great general public leaving Twitter since Elon Musk took over is becoming more prevalent in the news than ever. Many changes are being made on Twitter, and Musk recently announced that there will be more testing on the app to see what is working and what isn’t. However, thousands are not waiting around for the changes, and have already announced their leave with a Tweet and swift exit of the app.
For anyone wondering, Mastodon got over 70K sign-ups yesterday alone. Let's keep the momentum going! The "public square" of the web must not belong to any one person or corporation!
— Mastodon (@joinmastodon) October 30, 2022
With every social media app different from the other, Twitter was, or is, a platform for people to respectfully share their views and news updates as well as connect and network with others. Now that people are switching off Twitter, they are looking for a new alternative that has already been made and thriving since the Musk takeover. It is a German-based social network called Mastodon.
Mastodon has gained popularity since the Elon Musk takeover with half a million users joining the network since the 27th of October 2022. Although it still has a lot to grow in comparison to Twitter which has 238 million daily active users, Mastodon is known to be growing by the day, per hour with users moving from Twitter onto the new social networking app.
I just posted my first ever Mastodon post, with a photo from yesterday of @drmuig at the Good Omens recording session in Kingston.
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) November 9, 2022
Here's a Mastodon invitation if you need one: https://t.co/M8ZmzwRduX
What is Mastodon?
Similar to the Twitter social media app, Mastodon allows users to experience features such as replies, hashtags, and a retweet-like “boosting” feature. It is, however, add-free, and organised around interests and geographic regions.
What makes the app unique is that is made up of users on different servers. The server you choose to sign-up with will be based on your interests. We will explain this further when and if you decide to sign-up (see the process below).
when everyone switches over to separate Mastodon servers pic.twitter.com/EHY9md6SW6
— Janel Comeau (@VeryBadLlama) November 6, 2022
The app concentrates on giving you control or personalisation of how you want your profile to be, what you can see on your homepage, and organising your followers’ posts in chronological order. The purpose and goal of the app are to network with others who have the same interests as you by building your audience in confidence. You can follow or be followed by any other Mastodon users and have full control without any middleman.
Get Creative with Mastodon
Social media is a place where you can get creative with what you post. On this app, Mastodon gives you creative freedom by supporting audio, and video content, picture posts, accessibility descriptions, polls, content warnings, animated avatars, custom emojis, thumbnail crop control, and much more for self-expression.
Whether you’re an influencer, content creator, musician, artist, author, or journalist, Mastodon is an app created to help you get the best out of how you want to present yourself globally through the content you post.
Meaningful Conversations
Mastodon is an open-source developed by a non-profit organisation of multiple volunteers. Instead of being buried by algorithms and meaningless conversations, Mastodon promotes opportunity through thought-provoking, insightful conversations.
Signing-up Process
- Once you have downloaded the app, you will see your Mastodon homepage with two buttons – ‘Get started’ and ‘Log in’
- Click ‘Get started
- Pick a server based on your interests, region, or general-purpose one. You can still connect with everyone, regardless of the server
- After you have decided on the server that is best suited to your interest, you will see ‘Some ground rules’ – click next
- Add your image, pick a display name, username, email, and password
- Go onto your email and verify your account (check junk mail)
We will let you explore the rest!
Have you signed up for the app or interested in signing up? Let us know by tagging us on social media @itplive or @itpliveme on Twitter. Stay updated by subscribing to the ITP Live newsletter below or by clicking on the bell icon on the right side of the page.