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Mastodon can be successful for the people who use it even if it doesn't "make it big" enough to dethrone Twitter, Facebook, etc.

There are longstanding challenges to marketing something like Mastodon. Call it the "fediverse" or "PubSubHubBub" and I think people's eyes glaze over. But it doesn't have to appeal to everybody, and it might be better if it doesn't... Wouldn't it be great if we could undo the "Eternal September?"

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Fully agree, I don't get this worldview where anything that does not take the undisputed nr. 1 spot is to be considered a failure. I created my Twitter account ~10 years ago, I had barely any noteworthy interaction on it. I used it mainly to follow interesting accounts and people, but it never managed to convince me to tweet a lot myself.

On Mastodon I am more active than I've ever been on Twitter. This is of course also a side effect of it being new and exciting for many people. But what exactly do I get from Mastdodon becoming gigantic? All I need is a healthy, active userbase.

I don't care if Mastodon ever "overtakes" Twitter, all I care about is whether Mastodon can cultivate enough active users to stay healthy.

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