Mastodon Is Doomed To Fail — Here’s Why

Sorry, it’s not my fault.

I love Mastodon, I even wrote an article about it, but it’s not the new TikTok. If anything, it’s part of the NGMI (Not Gonna Make It) group with the former revolutionary and hype app that nobody’s using now: Clubhouse.

I searched for “Mastodon number of users,” and the top result gave me data from October 2022. We are in March 2023. Do you think that’s a sign of a booming platform? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

The top result for Twitter is an article from the beginning of March stating Twitter has 238 million daily active users. That’s 130 times more than Mastodon (1.8 million DAU)

That alone should tell you Mastodon is doomed to fail, but there’s more.

The name is for a bank, not a social network.

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear Mastodon? Extinct? Dinosaur? These don’t sound like concepts you would like to associate with if you’re the new kid on the block of social media platforms.

And if you think about it some more, words that come to mind are associated with elephants and mammoths. So Mastodon is massive, heavy, stable, and famous for its long-term memory. It is all good if you’re launching a bank, but not so much for a social network.

Look at the competition.

Snapchat is quick as a snap. YouTube uses tubes to transport things fast. Instagram delivers instantly. TikTok is fast as a metronome. There’s a common theme here.

And if we look around the internet, everyone is bragging about instant gratification and same-day delivery. That’s not what a mastodon does.

Mastodon moves with slow, secure, and heavy steps, while Twitter is a bird flying around and chirping.

There’s no discussion about which people will associate with something light and fun.

It’s decentralized

There’s a reason why we have countries and international organizations like the WHO and the UN.

It works better.

It’s the same for social networks. Having one centralized entity taking care of all the technical and administrative side makes it easy for users. Sure, everybody complains about social media having too much power and harvesting our private data, but the same everybody watches videos on TikTok for 2 hours per day on average.

While decentralized means more power to the users, it also means more work for the users. And they aren’t willing to pay the costs in time or money.

This brings me to the next point.

It’s too complicated

In some way, there are as many Mastodons as there are instances. Me.dm, the Medium instance, is one of them. Writing.exchange is another.

I’m already lost.

Which one should I choose? What’s the difference between them? Do I want to be @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected]?

You can’t be a successful social network if the sign-up is complicated. Too many people will say, “I had a look, didn’t understand anything, and went back to Twitter.”

Even Tim Denning isn’t talking about Mastodon

Remember BitClout (now DeSo)? It was supposed to be the new Twitter, but better because it paid you for your tweets or something to that extent. Everybody talked about it for a while. Tim Denning wrote an article (modestly) titled “The New Content Platform I’m Making Money from (And Dominating).”

That was July 2021.

Since then, BitClout died, and Tim Denning returned to Twitter. He’s even selling one of his kick-ass mastery courses about it right now: Twitter Badassery.

Tim Denning also talks and sells courses about Medium, LinkedIn, and making money online. But one thing he isn’t talking about is Mastodon.

In summary

• It’s decentralized, but nobody cares.
• It’s complicated to start using it; therefore, nobody knows if it’s simple afterward.
• The name doesn’t ring the right bells.

In summary, Mastodon is doomed to fail because only unknown bloggers like me talk about it.

Let me know why you think I’m wrong in the comments or on Twitter, but not on Mastodon — I don’t have an account.

Smillew is a modern explorer of the social media landscape. He was the first to masturbate in the metaverse and recently asked ChatGPT for oral stimulation. You can read his research articles here.