Is Mastodon fading? As Elon Musk’s Twitter battles it out with Meta’s white-hot Threads, the federated social networking service that rose to prominence in the wake of Musk’s Twitter acquisition appears to be losing momentum.
According to our latest research, the federated social network Mastodon is experiencing a significant decline in monthly active users (MAU). This comes as a surprise after the platform's initial surge in popularity following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
Here’s what we found (click the links to jump to the corresponding section):
- The primary Mastodon Android app had just 72,323 global MAUs in June 2023
- Downloads for the iOS and Android versions of Mastodon tell a similar story
- Conclusion
The primary Mastodon Android app had just 72,323 global MAUs in June 2023
Generally speaking, this isn’t a bad number. However, it’s down significantly from the app’s November 2022 peak, when it notched a massive 218,914 MAUs.
Downloads for the iOS and Android versions of Mastodon tell a similar story
Here, the red line indicates daily downloads for the Android version of Mastodon, while the blue line indicates daily downloads for the iOS version.
While Mastodon started out strong in November 2022, it has since flatlined and rarely surpasses 4,000 daily downloads.
Of course, Mastodon is a federated social network.
This means you can’t really extrapolate Mastodon’s overall performance using data from its official app only. Still, a quick review of some associated apps doesn’t do much to inspire confidence.
Here are some Android apps associated with Mastodon, in this case sorted by monthly global downloads:
And here are some iOS apps associated with Mastodon, again sorted by monthly global downloads:
As you can see, while the federated apps add to Mastodon’s total, it’s not enough to put it in the same realm as Twitter and Threads.
Speaking of, for the sake of comparison, let’s look at Twitter and Threads…
First, the incumbent. Since Mastodon’s November 2022 coming-out party, Twitter has registered a combined 181,431,657 app downloads, including roughly 78 million iOS downloads and 102 million Android downloads:
As for Threads, while we’re still gathering the data for the iOS app, it’s been one heckuva ride for the Android version, which has already tallied 54,124,879 downloads in the 10 days since its launch.
Conclusion
In November 2022, Mastodon saw a meteoric rise as the preferred landing spot for disaffected Twitter users. However, our latest analysis reveals a stark contrast to the initial hype. The number of daily downloads for Mastodon and Mastodon-related apps has fallen drastically.
Nevertheless, Mastodon does have a dedicated following. This has helped establish it as one of the strongest counterpoints to big tech competitors like Twitter and Threads. Indeed, the 6.7 million downloads accumulated by the platform’s primary app solidly outpace rivals like Gab, Getter, and Donald Trump’s Truth Social.
