> mastodon has failed to capture the audience numbers of the products it sought to compete against

I really don't think that was ever the goal.

They never wanted to capture every single user (have you seen the people on twitter? who would want to deal with that???)

They sought to carve out a targeted subset of users and did so successfully.

Life is about more than numbers, you know. Would you call your local steakhouse a failure because they're not putting up the numbers McDonalds does?

And thank god for that; I left in no small part because of those audiences of shit flinging gibbons.