John GruberJan 31, 2023

I like the fact that mastodon.social is the biggest instance, but I would leave for an instance that is paid only, say $10/month, has a cool domain name, and thus can afford to raise the rate limits.

Mastodon.social feels like early Twitter both culturally (good), and fail-whale-wise (not good).

Show threadMatt Shilling
@gruber yeah, yeah…agreed. But can we make it like $2.99/mo? We all don’t have that Markdown money.
Feb 2, 2023 at 4:43amIvory for iOS
Show threadJohn GruberFeb 2, 2023
@shilling I’m not sure $3/mo/user pays for such a site, profitably.
Show threadHans GerwitzFeb 2, 2023

@shilling @gruber the going rate for hosting a private instance seems to be around $5/mo, so I would be optimistic a large scale instance could be profitable near 3/user.

Especially if they built on something efficient like Takahē.

Show threadJohn GruberFeb 2, 2023
@hans @shilling Disagree. A large scale instance needs content moderators; a personal instance does not.
Show threadHans GerwitzFeb 2, 2023
@shilling @gruber well, that was a stupid oversight on my part 😆
Show threadMatt ShillingFeb 2, 2023

@gruber I was being facetious, however it’s an interesting business challenge.

$10/mo is a premium value service. (Think Netflix, HBO, Hulu) As is, these services survive through the volume of subscribers month over month and AD revenue. Yes, I understand this is an over simplification…

Although you and I may subscribe, you are going to have an uphill battle reaching critical mass in order to reach profitability.

Solution in 2023? Low price and sell the user data to advertisers…Sad.