Heh. I misremembered the date--thought it was today, but looks like it was October 5. On that day, 10 years ago, I posted a link to Mastodon on Hacker News, with the title "Show HN: A new decentralized microblogging platform". That it made it to the front page ended up bringing the first 5,000 users, setting the project on the trajectory it's on today.
At that point I was 23, freshly graduated from university with a B.Sc. in Informatics, living with my parents, and freelancing on the side (I had a freelancing career in web design since high school and went to university just to get a degree). I was able to save a lot from my student loan as well, so I had the opportunity to experiment with this open-source side project.
The codebase has been about 6 months in the works at that point (the first git commit was dated March 16, 2016) and mastodon.social had been running for a while too, since it was my way of testing how the federation works with other fediverse servers (and software, like GNU social) at the time. The API was the very first thing I worked on, and some of those API methods are still literally unchanged today, but the UI had already gone through multiple iterations by October 5.
There is a little time capsule of the UI as it was on that exact day, as I recorded a demo video for the Product Hunt submission. You can see how some UI concepts have persisted to this day, even as the details and level of refinement changed. You can also see the original blue accent color... I took that color palette from a website where people posted various color palettes, I do not remember its name anymore.
It's interesting that my bio as seen in the demo said "Developer of Mastodon, a GNU social alternative". That was the level of my ambition at the time: GNU social had a niche, tiny as it may in the grand scheme of things, and it appealed to me, so I just wanted to make something that would be nicer to use. (My original intent was making a TweetDeck-like app for GNU social, but I quickly pivoted into writing my own backend because GNU social's API was a mess and I like things to be neat).
The mascot was born around November 2016 when I asked my #Dota2 friend @dopatwo for an illustration to put on Mastodon's error page. It was meant to be a homage to Twitter's "fail whale". As you can see, the design of the mascot has changed considerably in ten years. It was cute then, but more realistic, less round. I much prefer the contemporary design, and the fact that it's not a single character.
@Gargron 2016?
@wouterkobes Thanks, fixed.
@Gargron Same error in the alt-text of the initial image, I reckon? 😄
@Gargron As one of the first 5000, I was wondering why you didn’t mention it on the day. Anyway, still glad to be on Mastodon. 😊
@Gargron Well done ahah
Oct 17, 2026, 4:09 PM@Gargron Lovely history! How rewarding and powerful to see how your tiny project has grown up!
The blue may have come from: https://www.colourlovers.com/
@scott Yes!
Oct 18, 2026, 8:09 AM
@Gargron
Congratulations.
Oct 16, 2026, 9:21 PM@Gargron
Colorhunter maybe? That's the one I used to use. Launched by Steve DeGraeve.
Oct 16, 2026, 9:28 PM@Gargron Tweettodon or Mastodeck?
@Gargron Oooohhh, the memories...
The UI wasn't very different when I joined in 2018.
Oct 17, 2026, 6:14 AMThank you @Gargron for all your efforts. Mastodon is the best thing that happened in the social network landscape during the last decade.
Oct 17, 2026, 9:02 PM
Oct 16, 2026, 9:15 PM@Gargron "the first git commit was dated March 16, 2026"
Surely 2026 must be a typo.
@Gargron lol the second article though:
Oct 16, 2026, 9:19 PM@Gargron Congrats! I remember when I first stumbled on to reviewing Mastodon. I had tried building a few socialish networkish things for friends and family, tore them all down, found Mastodon - open source, W3 spec, civil speech focus... it checked all my boxes and haven't looked back since.
Thank you for giving this to the world!
@Gargron A huge thank you!
@Gargron And an even bigger thank you for keeping it open and free and not selling off.
@Gargron Happy to have found you in that first year!
Did you see what Elon just posted? 👀
This is real, I see eIon post this before it was deleted. and the event is still working.
0.5 just came in...
What is this? Musk handing out Bitcoin to anyone who shows up on the site, or…?
Obvious scam account, people please report this
@Gargron I don't read the orange website so I'm not certain where I heard about Mastodon, it might have been on GNU Social. I decided to give it a shot and it immediately stuck. People have told me every year since then that it can't last and is destined to fade away. Here's to another ten!
@Gargron I have been deed longer than I have been here . Gid tho 👍
Oct 16, 2026, 11:10 PM@Gargron yes I noticed I missed marking my decade here. Earliest Mastodon related email I could find
@Gargron I remember you talking about your project on GNU-Social... congratulations, Mastodon is your legacy
@Gargron So awesome!
Happy Invention Birthday!
@Gargron thanks, i just upvoted you! 😎
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646083
Right oh. And thank you!
mastodon is 10 years old?!?!
@Gargron всё правильно сделал [x]
@Gargron Danke for Mastodon!
@Gargron How far we've come.
Thank you!
@Gargron Danke schön für die ganze Arbeit!
@Gargron Thanks so much. All your work on this is highly appreciated. Believe me.
There will be a tiny birthday celebration @DFN cloud services next month together with @mellifluousbox looking back on 10 years Mastodon. Stay tuned…
