Talking about Mastodon is talking about the wrong level. Whether or not the Fediverse succeeds does not depend on Mastodon alone, but also e.g. Pleroma, Misskey, Akkoma, Pixelfed, Peertube, Bookwyrm, Lemmy, and many more, all of which federate.

It's very possible we've not yet even seen the killer app for the Fediverse yet, but it can survive even if none of them individually get "big enough" in a way that many of the other Twitter competitors won't, not least because they're viable even as small self-contained communities.

As such, they don't need to "have a shot", and in the long run, ironically, that gives both the network as a whole and individual apps a shot. E.g. you can launch w/ActivityPub compatibility and instantly have some degree of network effect that helps levelling the playing field.

Quite the opposite. Social networks die as soon as parents get on it. Kids don't want to be on the same platform as their parents. The cycle repeats.

Arguably, Mastodon does not even want that shot. They've been perfectly happy even without last year's big influx of ex-twits.

I though 'parents' were more like Facebook category. What I think holds Twitter in position are news and public orgs.