Mastodon – Everything you need to know about the new Social Network

No, I’m not talking about Mastodon, the prehistoric mammal that looks similar to a mammoth. I’m talking about the new social media network that is similar to Twitter and seems to have popped out of nowhere!

The mysterious free social network was created by Eugene Rochko, a 24 year old from Germany. He originally created Mastodon because of all the frustrating new changes that were being made on Twitter.

Let’s take at all you need to know about the site...

How does it work?

Mastodon is a lot like Twitter, except it is not one single site, but many “instances”. Each instance is a different server that you can join to interact with other users, or you can create your own.

However, the way you post on Mastodon is similar to Twitter, but tweets are known as toots and retweets are known as boosts. Plus, instead of only 140 characters, you can use 500 characters per post!

How many people are using it?

It launched in October last year, but recently it has received a lot of attention. There are currently around 42 000 users, and interest in the new social network is still growing.

What else do we need to know?

At the moment Mastodon is free of all ads, open source and each post has its own privacy settings. It also has some very clear rules about racism, sexism and discrimination.

So, prepare to hear a lot of toots, instances and boost, because it looks like all the hype about Mastodon isn’t fizzling out anytime soon.

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