The Mastodon Show HN announcement[1] was mentioned in the article and this comment from rayalez seems prescient:
It doesnt have to become mainstream to be extremely valuable. If it could become a high quality niche community of geeks and hackers, like HN, it could be very awesome. Maybe it could be to twitter what HN is to reddit?
This is exactly what Mastodon has become to me.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646083
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