Musk did not respond to a request for comment, and Meta declined to comment.
An alternative service that attracted immediate attention after Mr. Musk bought Twitter was Mastodon, which is known as a syndication platform and functions as a collection of social networks. Mastodon, founded in 2016 by Eugen Rochko, a 29-year-old software developer, is by design unable to enforce platform-wide policies for deciding which posts to keep or delete. Because Mastodon’s original source code is public, anyone can create their own version of the service.
Since the beginning of last month, Mastodon accounts have grown nearly 33% to 6 million, according to joint platform guidelines Federal Diversity Party. Mastodon has no ads and is still mostly crowdfunded. It hired more staff and encouraged people to start their own versions of Mastodon.
Mastodon did not respond to a request for comment.
Hive Social, a social network founded in 2019, also more than doubled its users to 1.8 million last month. Its founder, 24-year-old Raluca Pop, attributes some of the growth to fan communities, such as those of K-pop and “Star Wars,” who left Twitter and found a new home on Hive Social.
The small company is trying to capitalize on the newfound interest to raise money and hire more employees. Hive Social is funded by a loan from Ms. Pop, $25,000 from private investors and more than $300,000 from a crowdfunding campaign. Ms Pop said it has four employees and hopes to hire content managers and more engineers.
But as people joined, the platform also encountered growing pains, including multiple accounts share same username and person do not mark Content that is not safe for work. On Thursday, Hive Social temporarily shut down its servers to address security concerns, Ms Pop said.
“Twitter has gone through a lot of changes under new leadership,” Ms Pope said. “Its timing was kind of impeccable. Everything was set up for us.”
More established social media companies are also looking to lure users away from Twitter.
The microblogging site Tumblr posted a “Reasons to Join Tumblr” Wire About a week after Mr. Musk took over Twitter.it also shared meme and watercress post About people leaving Twitter for Tumblr. It then started selling “Important Blue Internet Checkmarks” for $7.99 — the same price as a monthly subscription to Twitter Blue, a service promoted by Mr. Pay for features.
