So, while I was sleeping, the admin of mstdn.jp accepted a job offer from Niconico's parent company Dwango. He says there are no plans to merge mstdn.jp with friends.nico; but it does mean that both the two largest instances (which now are significantly larger than any others, no longer roughly the same as #3 and #4) are connected with Japanese media companies.
Also, mstdn.jp's total number of posted items is set to outstrip .social's soon, despite being a very much younger instance.
@uraimo I'm not inclined to think it's a problem at all. However, for me the main problem solved by Mastodon/OStatus is "I'd like to leave Twitter but want to remain in touch with my Japanese friends with whom I have no other connections." Others who think it solves a different problem may not see this kind of development as being quite so positive.
@mattskala Considering how fast it is to set up a new server, I'm not sure if this is really a problem this time.
And definitely not a problem for the whole network, there are only a few hundred of thousands of user for now, it could become millions instead of thousands.