Eugene Rocco I had the idea for Mastodon and built it about six years ago when Twitter plummeted again. A developer already interested in and working with open source software, he got the idea for his Mastodon from a federated version of a forum he built in high school.
that project is Called the Zeon Federation, it is no longer active. While developing it, he also built and sold a platform for managing artist escrow on commissions.
Mastodon’s success somewhat surprised its creators. Rochko did not participate in the project as a social user of his media powers, nor is he inclined to share much about himself. As we spoke, he dialed into our video chat from an undisclosed location. Gross If he thinks hackers are an end in itself to get viewers and revenue, Rochko seems to be the exact opposite when it comes to development.
This week, we spoke with Rochko about Mastodon’s early days, its recent surge in user numbers, and how advertising may or may not affect its future.
TechCrunch: You’ve probably seen a lot of growth in the last six weeks or so. Since the first days of the handover to Elon Musk, has the growth rate kept pace, increased, or decreased? How many users and servers do you have now?
Eugene Rocco: Looking at the chart, there was a big spike around the news that Elon Musk acquired Twitter. And then there was another surge when Musk laid off most of his Twitter employees. It’s a little bit down now, but it’s much higher than it was before October. Currently, he has 2.5 million monthly active users across his 8,600 servers across Mastodon.
While we don’t show growth rates, we currently have approximately 4,000 app downloads per day on iOS and Android. The biggest spike we saw was when Musk laid off an employee, with 149,000 downloads on Android and 235,000 on iOS. In the last 90 days, the iOS app has been downloaded 1.8 million times. Android provides different numbers, but in October there were 53,000 devices with Android app installed users. Currently that is 907,000 devices.
I can’t say much about whether mobile will be more popular than desktop. Not tracked. I didn’t create a dashboard for that.
“Moderation work is not suitable for automation. A simple case is so simple that even a human can do it in seconds. If it is complicated, automation is useless. Read the context of the situation and make a call.” needs humans.” Eugene Rocco
TC: You say “we”, how many people are there in Mastodon?
Loco: I’m the only full-time employee, and the other five are currently contract employees. We are looking to expand our full-time team and are working on several job openings. It’s a slow process. I wish I could do it sooner. But this is new ground for a company he has been running alone for six years. It’s been fine until now, but now we need more people.
TC: Is Patreon the only vehicle you’ve used to fund so far?
Loco: Patron is the main. We also built a custom sponsorship platform for businesses wanting to sponsor us and save on Patreon fees. received a subsidy. But mostly Patreon.
TC: So the majority of that is from about 8,500 supporters out there…
Loco: Yeah that brings in $31,000 a month. That number has increased dramatically this past month for him, and was just $7,000 last month. That’s the only reason you might even consider getting a new employee.
This is the kind of scary part of running a nonprofit based on donations. If your donations dry up, it’s your fault, but when you hire someone else and they stop donating, suddenly you’re responsible for someone else’s life. It has been a stopper for hiring other people as employees until now.
I think there’s some buffer now, so I’d like to see more people get involved.
