Twitter rivals including Meta are trying to capitalize on Musk-induced chaos

Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment and Meta declined to comment.

After Mr. Musk bought Twitter, an alternative service that immediately caught the eye was Mastodon, which is known as a federated platform and functions as a collection of social networks. Launched in 2016 by Eugen Rochko, a software developer who is now 29, Mastodon, by design, cannot enforce platform-wide policies on which posts to maintain or delete. And because Mastodon’s original source code is publicly available, anyone can create their own version of the service.

Since the start of last month, Mastodon accounts have grown nearly 33% to six million, according to the fediverse.party federated platform guide. Mastodon has no advertising and remains primarily crowdfunded. He hired more employees and encouraged people to start their own versions of Mastodon.

Mastodon did not respond to requests for comment.

Last month, Hive Social, a social network founded in 2019, also more than doubled its users, to 1.8 million. Its founder, Raluca Pop, 24, attributed some of the growth to fan communities, like those for K-pop and “Star Wars,” moving away from Twitter and finding a new home on Hive Social.

The small business tries to take advantage of the new interest to raise funds and hire more employees. Hive Social is funded by loans taken out by Ms. Pop, as well as $25,000 from a private investor and over $300,000 from a crowdfunding campaign. It has four employees and hopes to hire content moderators and more engineers, Ms Pop said.

But as people joined, the platform struggled to grow, including multiple accounts share the same username and the same people does not report work-hazardous content. On Thursday, Hive Social temporarily shut down its servers to address security issues, Ms. Pop said.

“Twitter is going through a lot of changes with the new management,” Ms. Pop said. “The timing is kind of impeccable. Everything fell into place for us.

More established social media companies have also started looking to capture people leaving Twitter.

Tumblr, the microblogging website, published a “reasons to join Tumblr” thread about a week after Mr. Musk took over Twitter. He also shared memes and tumblr posts about people leaving Twitter for Tumblr. Then he started selling “Important Blue Internet Checkmarks” for $7.99 – the same price as a monthly subscription to Twitter Blue, a service Mr. Musk promoted where people pay for features, including a check mark.