Mastodon Usage Soaring as Twitter Rebranding Leads to User Exodus: CEO Eugen Rochko

A lot of people stay because of lingering attachment to the platform. As weird as it is, changing the branding subconsciously tells the human brain "This is a new platform" and that makes switching mentally easier.

You've been considering leaving Twitter for a while, and suddenly one morning the bird has flown and Twitter has left you instead.
I think it's also a clear signal that things are really never going to return to normal, it's only getting worse from here. Which is easy those of us on the outside to observe, but maybe slightly harder from the inside when you still have most of the community still intact and posting.
- I think some of us also had hopes that the new CEO would put a leash on Musk and steer Twitter into calmer waters again, but this was just proof that Musk is still doing wtf he wants and the CEO is just there for show. So people have now abandoned their last bit of hope and therefore abandoned T...I mean X as well.
  While I haven't been an active user in a longer time, I've still been a very active lurker until Musk took over. By now, I've only checked Twitter every now and then when bored, to see what happened (as I mostly used Twitter as some kind of news feeds for stuff I couldn't easily follow in any other way). But today I started migrating off completely - going through my follow list one by one and finding ways to follow those things (like local police, local town, local zoo, etc.) in other ways.
  For some that means slower news, or only the most important news - which kinda sucks, as e.g. local police info were good to have in real time during major events or when there was some protest going on. For some this even means mailing lists, ugh.
  And a few I couldn't replace at all, so I'll miss out on those news. Sucks, but hopefully those people/entities will provide their news feed through some better means sometime now.
  
  the CEO is just there for show
  The CEO is there to fail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
  
  wall of text to say puppet non-white male CEOs ride failing companies into ground and get blamed. yet they do it anyway. scroll finger hyperactive syndrome flare-up
  
  If I had to guess, she's negotiated a rock solid contract with an exit package in mind. Either that, or she's an idiot because there is no fucking chance of being successful with Elon being Elon.
I think it’s spot on. It’s people who were already going through the stages of grief, were kinda stuck in “bargaining” (like: “nah, Twitter is not really dead, it’ll come back”), and the symbolism there about Twitter really being gone-gone fast-tracked them to depression/acceptance.
- The stages of grief don't have to go in that order. People can be angry at Twitter and then jump to acceptance that its never going back. No fast tracking needed.
  
  I was actually aware of that, which is why I wrote depression/acceptance, meaning they probably moved from bargaining to either one of those, thinking either of those 2 stages could prompt people to leave. By fast-tracking, I meant that moved happened faster than they would have if the rebranding hadn’t happened. It’s still a fascinating bit, I have known about the stages of grief for a while, but only learned recently (like, this year) that they didn’t have to happen in order.
- Denial: "There is no way Elon would do that to Twitter."
  Anger: "This is stupid. Why would Elon do this to Twitter? He's making things so much worse!"
  Bargaining: "Maybe if I hold out he'll revert the changes. Maybe Elon has some good left in his heart."
  Depression: "Why do stupid things like this happen to me?"
  Acceptance: "Looks like Twitter's dead in the water, we should move on."
  
  Yeah, I think that’s probably more accurate than what I was thinking, and that leaving belongs to acceptance rather than depression.
- They finally started to read the room and noticed the furniture they liked wasn't there and had been stolen. We've already figured out Musk's antics and that he's a deplorable human being. They're finally starting to open their eyes and pay attention, especially now that he's meddled with their toy.
When spez doubled down and Reddit imploded i moved to lemmy. I also discovered mastodon. But then i realized the reason i used twitter was to follow certain people/accounts none of which are on mastodon.
We had a reason to ditch Reddit, because they forced everyone off our beloved third party apps. But twitter didn't have this kind of meltdown. Im only a consumer on Twitter, and its still working fine. No reason to quit. The rate limit is dumb but it isn't the end of the world.
- Yup Twitter was for following people and Reddit was for following topics. Lemmy with all the new users is pretty much viable for big topics now but Mastodon doesn't magically have all the people I want to follow just because it's a better format.
- some dignity might be enough reason to leave it
Couldn't agree more. I was a fail whale era twitter user. Wayyyyy early user. I ditched it a little bit before musk actually, but I still ended up seeing threads here and there because of Reddit.
Just today I landed on a Twitter thread, saw that x and it was like, strangely repulsing...I wanted to get the hell out of there asap

Elon rate limits tweets

i sleep

Elon changes the logo

real shit??

I've already had several non-tech people say something along the lines of "What the heck is this X thing on my phone?"

I gotta wonder how many other people are just impulse uninstalling something they don't recognize off their phone as well, since ol' Musky boi did this with basically zero user notice as well.

I had a similar thought. Non-techies are going to open up Twitter and see a different logo but it the text still says Twitter and think they're on a phishing site.
- Bass pro shops social media > Twitter/X

The blue bird was the last thing they had left

I think a good amount of it is also "the straw that broke the camel's back." Twitter users have been taking abuse after abuse. Like many others have stated, they use Twitter to follow specific people. If those people aren't on other platforms, then they're going to stay. But after a certain point, the cost becomes too high. Now the platform is rebranded and now it looks as alien as it's begun to feel. I think that's why so many are once again leaving. Before they could just ignore everything else going on and try to move on with their day. Not there's a big, fat X reminding them of how much they're starting to/already hate the platform now.

Renaming Twitter to 𝕏 is probably the straw that break the camel's back to those people.

I'd like to think it's people finally realizing "Holy shit he IS an idiot" but that might be too optimistic

Because tweeting and being on Twitter is culturally relevant. Twxing and being on =..,,,/''''°°X°°""/,,,...= is sad and cringe.

People run away from things which are sad and cringe.

People run away from things which are sad and cringe.
Threads would like to have a word
- I kinda like the name "Threads" but X sounds like something 12 year old me came up with
No one goes around saying they're on twitter and that they tweet. People aren't going to leave in any great numbers because it's now called X.

The logo change has brought out a new wave of articles and tweets about it, and people go "oh no that's right I'm on twitter! Well THIS is the final straw! Thank goodness there were all these hate articles and tweets that reminded me I was supposed to be angry!"

Also, many of the people who "jump ship" are right back on Twitter within a week. mastodon.social has an entire graveyard of celebrity accounts that haven't been posted to in months because the outraged celebrities just went back to twitter.

I'm happy for Mastodon (I run a fediverse instance and the more users there are the more chances of interesting people and the like), and some of those people do realize they like the vibe more and stay, and a lot of those bumps are significant for the platform. The thing is, we're talking a few hundred thousand, maybe a million accounts of 200 million daily active users on twitter.

Remember why Ray Kroc wanted McDonald's... because of the name/brand. Anybody could make a hamburger/shake shop or shack but he had to have the name because the name was a seller.

Nobody thinks X is cool other than Elon musk and him switching to it is another signifier of how uncool Twitter has become. Every little thing adds to the flow of traffic to the exit.

It's like watching an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head where every single decision they make is a bad decision. And it's hilarious.

people do weird things

None of it was fine, people have been browsing for alternatives ever since Elon Musk took over.

At most, many hoped things would ultimately stay the same, which they definitely didn't. The biggest hurdle is that a lot of people there are waiting for their friends and favorite content creators to pick what place they will move to, and content creators are extra hesitant because they don't know if they will have as much following and reach as they used to. I see a bunch of smaller creators pretty much mourning their careers.

This will be one of the first "in your face" things that is immediately noticable by a finicky user base that only understands and associates value to popular brands. Musk just removed the popular and familiar brand that people are comfortable with, so why would those people stay?

Made a mastodon account yesterday mainly out of curiosity. Never been to Twitter.

So they might be counting just me lol

People really love their cute animal logos I guess, #whatcanyoudo?

And probably won't matter much.

This user surge will probably go crawling right back in a week or two.

Every surge will retain more people as every surge brings more content.
- That's true. I just don't expect this one to be quite so consequential as the others.
Yeah, if moving to Threads wasn't enough to hold people there, I doubt Mastodon will be able to hold them either.

Also how do they know it is a twitter exodus and not a Reddit or Threads exodus? I quit reddit entirely and I know many who have as well. It seems much more likely to be the case.

I get your point, but Twitter is more analogous to Mastadon than to Lemmy.

Yeah it makes no sense. I think the media is just out to trash Elon at every opportunity for any miniscule thing. He is somewhat of an outcast of the billionaires club in that he dies not appear to want to enslave humanity and deny the poors of their rights.

Yea he just settles for treating his employees with no respect and firing them on a whim without their owed severance pay.
- Cite examples?
  
  Here's one big example of unpaid severance pay: https://www.reuters.com/legal/twitter-again-sued-over-severance-pay-bias-during-layoffs-2023-07-18/
  Plus I've read many comments from insiders before that every single company he runs is a terrible place to work for, in terms of overworking employees.
  
  I mean... take your pick on who he hasn't paid, there are pleeeeenty of examples out there. He even lost the ability to engage in arbitration over the unpaid severance because he didn't pay the mediators lmfao. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=twitter+unpaid+bills
  Serious question for you- why are you defending him? Like, the information demonstrating he's kind of stupid and a terrible person is so easily available to you. At this point you have to actively work to remain ignorant of it, and his history of trying to claim accomplishments that aren't his own. Why bother?
What are you on about? Every opportunity to trash him??? He can easily change his behaviour, he's a trash person so he doesn't. He absolutely wants to deny the poor their rights, look at how he treats the workers of twitter and how he spoke of those he fired. I truly don't know how you can be this blind unless it's willful. Get real
- Twitter shrunk its staff by 3700, many of whom left of their own volition. Examples of some companies that cut more jobs then Twitter that nobody seemed to givr a damn about: Amazon 27k Meta 21k Accenture 19k Alphabet 12k Microsoft 10k Salesforce 8k Disney 7k Dell 6.6k
  I guess the people working at those companies just don't matter huh?
  I don't see any other billionaires fighting for basic human rights like free speech other than Elon. He doesn't have a perfect track record on that count but it is better than the flat 0 of the rest of that clique.
  
  HAHAHAHAHA you cannot be serious? Yes freeze peach warrior Elon. Get. Fucking. Real.
  
  Great contribution, gold star.
  
  Because you aren't worth it. You clearly ignore evidence being placed in front of your face so there isn't a point. Literally start googling about his management of twitter, all the evidence is there. But you won't
  
  Ask people from India or Turkey what they think about Elon fighting for free speech. Especially after he said, "By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law." Which means he's all in favor of what North Korea considers free speech.
  
  You should really learn to separate claims with actions. Musk likes to claim he fights for free speech (well he used to, for some reason he hasn't really talked much about it lately), but he has not only done nothing in favour of them but actually opposed it during his ownership of twitter.
  Also, I don't know what kinda gotcha you think you have with those layoff numbers. It is as if you think that people here just love all those other corporations and only hate Musk, when that is the opposite of the truth.
Yeah, I mean, who hasn't wanted to experiment with putting microchips into baboon skulls, or called someone a pedophile just because they hurt your feelings, or treats their workers like absolute trash? He's just a regular guy doing regular things and the media is using him as their whipping boy.
- Transhumanism is a thing whether we like it or not, hopefully Elon will do it ethically. I don't care if he said mean things to somone, that is between him and the individual. Provide examples of him treating his employees like trash?
  
  Provide examples of him treating his employees like trash?
  Someone fairly recently wrote a very long article about it., but it is only the first drop in the ocean of stories google comes up with about how bad an employer he is.
Wait, what? Have you ever heard of longtermism? "Your stupid peasants' suffering today matters little if we can take humanity to space^TM. Don't hold back progress." If this is not enslaving humanity and shitting on the poor, I don't know what is.
- What are you even talking about? Care to elavorate? How is he making anyone suffer?
  
  No, you're sealioning, this is a waste of time :/ he's at least as scummy as any other billionaire, like Zucky, Bezos, Gates, Thiel and all the other ones nobody hears about.
  
  Why do you think the media goes so hard after Elon and we don't hear much or anything at all about the others? Why is there a rabid cult of anti muskers that try to denigrate him at every opportunity? What is their agenda? When someone is singled out it should make you reflect on the reason why. He is hardly the worst billionaire around yet he gets all the flak.
  
  Why do you think the media goes so hard after Elon and we don’t hear much or anything at all about the others?
  Because the others stay out of the spotlight. Musk deliberately shitposts and wants to be seen, so the media (and everyone else) sees him and reacts to that.
  But if you take your time to actually acquaint yourself with matters, you will notice that the media and everyone else are also very busy criticising other corporations and other billionaires. It is just that Musk being the narcissist that he is, very much like Trump, deliberately create stories on a daily basis through his poor judgement and constant craving for exposure.
  
  The media drooled all over him and carried him until he declared war on them. Look up news of him before 2020, there is hardly anything negative (and there should be, he's been manipulating stock and treating employees like shit, like the other Billionaires). When did the media say anything critical about hyperloop? You live by hype, you die by hype.
He doesn't need to enslave humanity, just his Mars colony. As far as money over rights are concerned, his 'free speech absolutist digital town square' sure does give a lot more privileges for those willing to pay.
Musk has openly stated his support for the Republicans and for right wing causes countless times during his twitter shitposting period. If anything he has more openly voiced support of enslavement of humanity and the denial of the rights of poors than most of his billionaire colleagues, who are mostly all too smart to voice those ideas anywhere in public.