Make way for Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter

Eugen Rochko was annoyed with Twitter and so he decided to set about rebuilding Twitter from scratch. He started Mastodon, a distributed, open-source version of Twitter.

Mastodon ended up getting over 24,000 followers in the first few hours of its inception and is now giving tough competition to Twitter.

If you thought nothing can take on Twitter and its 140-character magic, think again!

Mastodon is a social network, which many think, has the potential to take on Twitter. Started by 24-year-old Eugen Rochko, he built the app after “Twitter continuously made decisions that he didn’t like”.

Mastodon allows users to create accounts, follow others, and post status updates called “toots.” It is similar to Twitter in many ways, but it is also not like it in many other ways.

Firstly, Mastodon has better privacy controls than Twitter and unlike Twitter’s 140-charater limit, Mastodon users can send toots with 500 characters. Individual toots can be marked private, meaning that you don’t have to choose between a public or a private account like you have to, on Twitter.

Mastodon is Twitter’s own service and, not a third-party client. The social media site is a type of Free and Open Source Software, known as the “GNU social” which basically means that Twitter founder Jack Dorsey does not own it, and there is no board which is pressing Rochko to monetize user data or asking him to resign.

In fact, Rochko, who lives in Germany, has so far managed to fund the project with just a Patreon account. Patreon is a service that allows people to make recurring micro-payments to creators on the site. His target goal, which he has surpassed, was only 800 dollars a month.

Once you know how to work your way around Mastodon, the interface quickly feels intuitive, and works like a better version of Twitter.

In the battle between a massive beast and a fluttering bird, it’s all too obvious to decide who’s going to be on top but we’ll have to wait and watch if a little birdie flies its way up the social networking platforms.

Watch more stories on ‘The Social Connection’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3C-f1HGVOA