While Mastodon was first released in October 2016, the service began to expand in late March and early April 2017.[31] The Verge wrote that the community at this time was small and that it had yet to attract the personalities that keep users at Twitter.[10] The global use has risen from 766,500 users as of 1 August 2017,[32] to 1 million users on 1 December 2017.