Why does it need to compete with tech giants for people to be enthusiastic about it?
Having an organic community is good for longevity if not massive short term adoption.
The feeling I get from comments on hacker news and such, is that mastodon is a replacement for twitter that _everyone_ should switch to. So you're competing with twitter and any other replacement like threads.
Not GP, but the utility of a social app is linked to network effects - i.e. the more people who use it, the more utility it provides. Otherwise you're risking tooting to the wind.
There are diminishing returns at a certain point though, the crowd gets so large that utility stops increasing.
I want to interact with experts in subjects I'm interested in, the occasional media figure, and some brands. Sadly brands are lacking, but I get enough of the rest on Mastodon to keep me happy.
It's a shame Patrick Rothfuss isn't on Mastodon, but John Scalzi is, so that's cool.