A spike in the registration of .social domains has been attributed to volatility in social platforms, according to Identity Digital (formerly Donuts). According to them, .social registrations have increased 435% since Elon Musk acquired Twitter.
Identity Digital posted the following:
“Shortly after Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, the social media platform lost more than 1.3 million users,[1] and around the same time .social domain registrations surged, per data from Identity Digital,™ a leader in connecting the online world with domain names and related technologies. For example, in the first two weeks of November, month-over-month (MoM) .social top-level domain (TLD) registrations were up 435%.”
“Volatility in social platforms that people rely on leads users to take action to own their digital identity and content, which often starts with finding a domain name,” said Akram J. Atallah, CEO of Identity Digital. “One platform capitalizing on the Twitter shakeup is Mastodon.social, a distributed social media alternative that boasts, “Social networking that’s not for sale.”
The Mastodon platform allows users to set up their own servers that host Twitter-like communities where the rules are their own instead of creating a single unified platform. Users have the option of joining a server that matches their interests and community standards, connecting with other users on other servers, or blocking all content from one server. The Fediverse consists of a collection of interconnected communities that are referred to as the Fediverse.
“Social media users understand that big tech doesn’t work without them,” said Atallah. “They are making a stand to own their content and build digital identities resistant to platform volatility and leveraging descriptive domains like .social to do so.”