Mastodon in Korea

Real quick here, I was just surfing around a bit checking out Mastodon (open source decentralized Twitter alternative) . I wondered what the Korean adoption of it was like.

Korean users on Mastodon. Image Source.

Is it popular in Korea? No, no it's not. But its popularity has slowly risen over the past year. 

Mastodon use in Korea. Source.

Numbers in Korea seems to fluctuate between 700~900 users. Compare that to nearly 1 million in neighboring Japan. 

Most populated Korea instance of Mastodon. Source.

1. The most "popular" Mastodon instance (≈local server, sort of) is called Twingyeo (트잉여), at https://twingyeo.kr, even though a domain lookup says it's hosted in Japan. It holds 492 users (as of this post), so about half of all South Korean users. 
2. The second most popular is Sakaba at https://sakaba.space which appears to be running in Japanese yet a lookup indicates it's from Busan, South Korea. Both appear to have userbases heavily from the otaku demographic. Some have been to the Google offices. Neat. 
3. Coming in 3rd was https://chorus.space with 48 users.

About page for Twingyeo.kr Source.

I'm not surprised by the type of users, since Mastodon is still a fringe techie thing. There are a few Korean articles, but not much. Here's a Korean-language sign-up guide but you can follow along with the screenshots:

마스토돈을 사용해봅시다. (트위터와 비슷한 SNS)

Finally, this article suggests why Japan has so many users:

Mastodon is big in Japan. The reason why is… uncomfortable. 

Hint: lolicon. 

Will I use Mastodon? Probably not, at least for now. I still think blogging and following via RSS is the best way to go, has the most mature support, and a proven 20 years. The problem is with engagement and commenting, in which case I can see why services like this are superior in that way. But Mastodon lets you follow users via RSS too so it seems like a great middle ground. Let's see if it grows. 

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Updates 2022:

See a newer post here for a list of currently active Mastodon instances in Korea or that focus on Korean language speakers: List of Korean Mastodon instances

Additionally, I am now on Mastodon.