Is the “exodus” over? See how Twitter alternatives have evolved since Elon Musk took over

Was there a Twitter exodus or just a Twitter hiatus? Did it matter? The new data examines how various “Twitter alternatives” have fared in the months since Elon Musk acquired the popular microblogging network, after the boom in new installs fueled by his acquisition has eased. Data shows that many apps continue to grow at a slower rate, while other apps grow more slowly. But it also shows that Twitter itself was never significantly affected, at least in terms of new app installs.

Of course, downloads are just a window into the big picture. But it’s a metric that can be independently assessed using third-party data, rather than relying on companies to report their own metrics, many of which aren’t.

Interest in a variety of Twitter alternatives began in late October, when Tesla and SpaceX executive Elon Musk officially completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Eternal chaos on the microblogging site has been the norm ever since. In the midst of controversial political decisions and sudden changes, a portion of Twitter users decided to turn to other sites to find their social correctness or at least try different options for a while.

Twitter alternatives like Mastodon, as well as mainstream social platforms like Tumblr, saw a rapid and significant increase in downloads and active users in November.

Now that the dust has settled, well, Twitter is still a mess, but I guess we’re used to it. It’s worth checking out how some of these Twitter alternatives are doing today.

The data, compiled for TechCrunch by app intelligence firm datos.ai, isn’t an exhaustive look at the entire alternative Twitter app landscape. For obvious reasons, some of the popular but unreleased apps that have raised money for their Twitter-like experiences, such as Post, T2, and Spill, are not included. For the same reason, it doesn’t include Blue Sky, the decentralized alternative that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has in the works. Some smaller apps and Trump’s Truth Social are also not included.

However, the company has reviewed some of the biggest challenges to Twitter users’ attention, including Mastodon’s Fediverse-connected app and others.

A recent report from Wired indicated that Mastodon’s growth spurt is over, as the number of active users has dropped by more than 1 million. They suggested that many newcomers to Mastodon decided that the app was not a viable replacement for Twitter. The platform grew from 380,000 to 2.5 million monthly active users in two months, the report said, but dropped to 1.4 million active users in January. However, as Techdirt’s Mike Masnick pointed out, Fediverse as a whole – i.e. the group of interconnected servers hosting Mastodon along with other apps – has grown from 600,000 active users in the pre-Musk era to about 2.6 million today. Almost no depression, he said.

Data.ai’s analysis of global iOS and Android app installs also shows that the Mastodon app continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace.

Installs are down slightly from November’s peak of 2.9 million monthly downloads. It still managed 180,000 new installs in January, which is 169,000 more installs than September 2022. Sure, it’s certainly not enough to bring down Twitter, but it’s still not slowing down. (Of course, we understand that app downloads don’t equate to active users, as Mastodon’s own data shows. Downloads are just a sign of user interest, but many apps never get past the initial release, if opened at all. .) .

Mastodon’s mobile traction is more complicated because there’s a large and growing ecosystem of third-party clients in addition to the web for users to try out. A popular alternative to the official Mastodon app is Ivory, the recently released Tapbots client, from which the Tweetbot Twitter app has been removed due to changes to Musk’s Twitter API. Ivory is only a few weeks old so it doesn’t fit into this review, but it may have redirected some Mastodon downloads for a short period of time during release.

While Mastodon continues to hold its own, other Twitter alternatives have experienced stagnant or slow download growth.

Reddit and two other politicized alternatives, Tribel and GETTR, have experienced slow download growth since September 2022. Reddit downloads are down 20,000 since September, while left stem and right GETTR downloads are down 36,900 and 42,000, respectively.

To be fair, Reddit is still a huge app, with 4.2 million new installs in January, compared to the 4.7 million during its peak in November. Because of this, it’s unclear whether the Twitter chaos had a major impact on growth or decline, other than perhaps a slight increase in installs as people decided to spend their free time elsewhere for a while.

Meanwhile, Tribal and GETTR are not doing so well. The former had only 1,100 new installs in January, the latter 48,000.

Those 48,000 are far more than Hive, another Twitter alternative that quickly rose to prominence after Musk took over Twitter.

Yet another mix of MySpace, Twitter, and Instagram, the social app attracts a young audience. Hive quickly found itself in the top 20 of the US app store in November after one million registrations, as it claimed at the time. But Hive had to shut down for a long time to rewrite its software after serious privacy and security issues.

However, Data.ai’s numbers seem to support Hive’s claims of an increase in November, as there were 1.1 million new installs that month, up from just 300 (!!) the previous month. The hive continues to grow, if only a little. It had 10,700 more installs in January than it did in September 2022, but that’s because it only had 300 installs that month (same as October).

Two other apps that many thought would benefit from the Twitter buzz were Tumblr and Discord.

As it turns out, Twitter’s changes don’t seem to play a role in its growth or decline. In fact, Discord installs dropped from 8.3 million in October 2022 to 8.0 million in November, while other apps boomed. It then increased the number of installs again to 8.5 million in December and 9.7 million last month. As with Reddit, this move doesn’t seem to reflect an exodus from Twitter, nor a decline in newcomers who later left the service. Discord alone is fine.

More interesting, however, are the Tumblr numbers. The company itself reported to have gained some traction over the Twitter exodus. Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, whose company acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019, told The Atlantic that Tumblr downloads for iOS increased 62% the week after Musk acquired Twitter.

If you look at the iOS and Android data and combine them as the data.ai numbers do, there is definitely an increase in sight for November. Tumblr had 880,000 new downloads in November, up from 450,000 and 500,000 in September and October, respectively. That trend has since normalized, though Tumblr is still slightly ahead of the previous benchmark, with 510,000 installs in December and 480,000 in January. The company also caused a stir in November when Mullenweg announced that Tumblr would soon add support for ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol that powers Fediervese.

Finally, regarding Twitter… have you ever heard the phrase “all press is good press”?

It seems that Twitter has benefited from increased attention or perhaps bottlenecks.

The number of global mobile app installs increased by 3.7 million in January compared to September 2022. Twitter installs, in particular, did not decrease in November. Instead, it received new downloads, although some users seemed to be switching to other apps. In other words, any exodus from Twitter could have been caught by newcomers to Twitter. Active user data would tell a better story here, but Twitter is no longer a public company and it’s unclear if Musk is analysis of user data like Twitter before it, which would allow direct comparison. But his claims of an explosion in subscriptions in November may be indicative, as there were more app installs in that month than in October.

Data.ai found that Twitter grew from 16.6 million installs in October to 18.6 million in November when Musk took over, then fell to 16.9 million in December. Last month, it rose again to 18.6 million installs. That means it has the same 24.8% download growth as November.

Meanwhile, the wider range of Twitter alternatives increased downloads by 35.6% in November and dropped to 8.1% in January.

As it turns out, there’s still no real winner when it comes to Twitter alternatives.

Larger apps like Reddit, Discord, and Tumblr still have significant user bases and will continue to grow, but they haven’t exactly taken a share of Twitter’s user base for themselves. Minor apps crashed or worked normally again.

Either way, the biggest boost to the broader ecosystem will depend on Fediverse and Mastodon’s new user awareness, even if the app hasn’t become a dominant force. Fediverse’s growth could be a trend that will continue beyond just a few months after Twitter’s acquisition, as more apps join the decentralization.