The chaos that started after Twitter was bought by Elon Musk caused some users to look for a new platform. Alternative social apps and microblogging platforms have seen strong increases in user numbers in recent days, notably the decentralized open-source Twitter alternative Mastodon. The founder and CEO of the service recently announced that more than half a million users have joined the network since the completion of Mastodon’s October 27 Twitter deal, reaching 1 million monthly active users. Currently, the platform has reached 1.5 million.
Mastodon saw approximately 322,000 new downloads from US app stores in the 12 days (October 27 – November 7) following Twitter’s acquisition. That’s over 100 times the 3,000 downloads it saw in the previous 12-day period. Globally, the app reached 1 million installs in the same timeframe from October 27 to November 7, up 657% from 15,000 in the previous 12 days.
Other third-party Mastodon servers also saw a spike between the two periods, with Metatext and Tootle both increasing from less than 1,000 installs to 19,000 and 7,000.
However, Mastodon is not the only platform to profit from the change in Twitter. In a new report, app information company Sensor Tower analyzed the growth experienced in other platforms after Musk’s takeover.
The US application installs of Tumblr, whose access was banned in our country in the past days, increased from 47,000 to 92,000, a 96% increase between the two periods. In addition, the number of global installs increased by 77% from 170,000 to 301,000.
Huge boosts in CounterSocial and more
In addition, another alternative social app, CounterSocial, reached 24,000 installs, a 2,300% increase in US app stores within 12 days of purchase, and grew by 33,000 to 3,200% worldwide, with 33,000 installs.
Another application information firm, data.ai, segmented data in a slightly different way. It examined the worldwide download growth of various social apps over the seven-day period following the purchase (October 27 – November 2) and then compared it to the previous seven-day period.
Data shared with TechCrunch confirms the massive gains Mastodon and CounterSocial made in terms of growth in their global downloads between the two eras. According to the analysis, Mastodon installs increased by 2,200% and CounterSocial installs increased by 1,200%. But Data.ai dug deeper into the charts of app stores and discovered that a number of other social apps were seeing gains beyond direct Twitter alternatives.
These include David’s Disposable (83% increase over two periods), nFollowers (50% increase), CocoFun (46% increase), Substack Reader (24% increase), Tribel (11% increase), Tumblr (7% increase), and Pinterest (2% increase). In particular, Substack is ramping up its marketing efforts as a social community after Twitter’s acquisition, and even launching a new discussion feature that allows authors and their viewers to participate in chain chats.
What about Twitter?
But all these numbers don’t mean that the drama is all bad for Twitter. There are also many people who have installed Twitter for the first time since the acquisition.
Data.ai shows Twitter’s app installs increased by 17% after the purchase, while Sensor Tower’s data looks at a slightly longer time frame and shows a 21% increase. Sensor Tower says Twitter saw 7.6 million global downloads and $502,000 in consumer spend in the 12 days after the purchase, while data.ai says it saw 6.3 million installs and an increase of $303,000 over the 12-day period.
However, these consumer spending amounts should be viewed with skepticism for now, as Twitter Blue’s release was paused after only a few days. There is no reason yet to accept that these numbers indicate a significant increase in subscription demand with long-term staying power. These data will appear in the future. Still, this data shows Musk’s ability to market things to his fan base and users’ general curiosity about what’s going on with Twitter’s products right now.
While Twitter has made slight gains this week, not everyone is happy with the changes. Some angry Twitter users continue to voice their concerns about this purchase in their App Store reviews of the Twitter app. On November 5, 2022, Twitter experienced a spike in negative ratings, with the addition of 119 one-star iOS reviews.
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