FT Alphaville shutters Mastadon service

FT Alphaville has closed its Mastadon server, writes Bryce Elder of the Financial Times.

Elder writes, “A few months ago, FT Alphaville thought it might be fun to host a Mastodon server. Boy, were we wrong!

“It is therefore with relief and regret that we announce the shutdown of Alphaville.club, this blog’s completely unofficial home on the Fediverse. Our reasons are listed below in full but, to summarise, Mastodon has proved more hassle than it’s worth.

“If you signed up via Alphaville.club then moving to an extant server should be straightforward. We intend to give everyone three months to vacate (as the Mastodon Server Covenant suggests) though if traffic drops to zero we reserve the right pull the plug earlier.

“Meanwhile, for the benefit of needy billionaires and/or Morgan Stanley’s Distressed Debt & Special Situations team, here are a few things we learned about why taking responsibility for a social media site is a bad idea.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.