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Eugen Rochko was annoyed with Twitter. The company had made a series of changes that he thought eroded the value of the service: limiting how big third-party applications could grow, for example, and implementing an algorithm-driven timeline that made Twitter feel uncomfortably similar to Facebook. Most people in Rochko’s situation fired off an angry tweet or two and moved on. Rochko set about rebuilding Twitter from scratch. Mastodon, a distributed, open-source version of Twitter, is almost identical to the platform it’s based on, but with key differences: posts can run 500 characters rather than 140, and users can make individual posts private. Rochko launched Mastadon with little fanfare six months ago. Then last week, Twitter rolled out an update that changed the way it displays replies ; many longtime users complained that the redesign is confusing — in a piece on Motherboard, Sarah Jeong asked, “Why does Twitter hate itself so much?” Overnight, Mastodon added users by the … [Read more...] about Mastodon.social is an open-source Twitter competitor that’s growing like crazy

25. Jason Mraz Username: Jason_Mraz Followers: 363,621 Number of Pictures: 254 Numbers as of April 29, 2012 24. Pink Username: Pink Followers: 371,405 Number of Pictures: 72 23. Jessica Alba Username: TheRealJessicaAlba Followers: 371,641 Number of Pictures: 228 22. Cody Simpson Username: CodySimpson Followers: 371,703 Number of Pictures: 198 21. Kat Von D Username: TheKatVonD Followers: 391,431 Number of Pictures: 954 20. Jenna Marbles Username: JennaMarbles Followers: 407,625 Number of Pictures: 181 19. Ryan Seacrest Username: RyanSeacrest Followers: 408,881 Number of Pictures: 75 18. Alicia Keys Username: AliciaKeys Followers: 419,692 Number of Pictures: 65 17. Trey Songz Username: TreySongz Followers: 427,203 Number of Pictures: 34 16. Lauren Conrad Username: LaurenConrad Followers: 427,538 … [Read more...] about 25 Most-Followed Users on Instagram [PICS]

So maybe that $1 billion it cost Facebook to buy Instagram was a bargain after all. The photo-sharing app is on fire. It now has more than 50 million users — and is adding new ones at the rate of roughly 5 million per week, according to its API. Instagram hit 40 million users around April 13, and 30 million at the start of the month (no April Fooling). This is astonishing growth for an app that started 2012 with just 15 million users. Of course, the fact that the app was recently released for Android — after being iPhone-only for its first two years — is likely driving a lot of those sign-ups. But Instagram also hit number one in the iOS App store for the first time in the wake of the Facebook acquisition. Google doesn't break out exactly how many Android downloads an app gets on its Google Play page . But Instagram did cross the 10 million download threshold two days ago, so it's a safe bet that roughly 40 million of those users are on the iPhone. In other words, … [Read more...] about Instagram Passes 50 Million Users, Adds 5 Million a Week