Nope, it sounds like you want Mastodon to be twitter. Or think that it should be trying to be?
They have a blog & followers and some nomenclature in common. But they're really not that similar at all.
If they weren't using @ notation and "followers" etc people would complain it's too different. But because they're using those things, people also complain that it's not similar enough. Tough situation.
It's just best to think of it as something else. It's federated activity feeds.
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.
Yes: there are reasons ordinary users might prefer Mastodon to Twitter; as I said:
* You can write full posts in Mastodon
* You can own your own data, run your own service, or select from a variety of hosted options
* The ecosystem encourages good third-party clients and tooling
The tooling isn't there, but then, I don't think anybody expected the events of the last few months, so I'm inclined to give it a quarter or two. As a casual user, there are ways in which Mastodon is superior to Twitter already, and most of my problems are with the clients; Tapbots can't keep up with the beta demand for Ivory, and there's 2-3 other promising clients, so I'm optimistic.
I wrote Mastodon off for years, but: it's pretty good? I miss the blogosphere, and Mastodon is a step back towards it.
I get your point, I just figured I'd point out your misunderstanding of mastodon specifically, to you so you can better understand it. It isn't a just a twitter alternative.
I think networks like Twitter have created a demand for mass-scale socializing though. If that's your reason for joining Twitter, then Mastodon isn't the experience you're looking for. As others have mentioned, Mastodon is oriented around creating communities. But there are many tools for creating communities, everything from Discord guilds to mailing lists. What the journalist who bounced off Mastodon was probably looking for was access to the mass socializing on Twitter, not the focused community experience of Mastodon.
Why do you think it is supposed to? I've been using mastodon for almost a decade and it's been a great experience from the start but I would say pretty different than twitter. Personally I hope Twitter refugees won't ruin the magic of it. It being a bit more niche is great, just like with hacker news too.
I've been trying to use Mastodon more, but the fact is it just doesn't have the same kind of traffic that twitter does. It seems to get dominated by earnest, long-form threads... which are nice, but the chaos of twitter was one of its selling points and their absence is loud.
This is how I feel as well. People always say that Mastodon will never replace Twitter because it’s either a) too hard to sign up for, b) no enough people on using it. However, since it’s federated, I feel the easier to find people and posts that are more akin to my interests on there. I just joined a midsized software dev focused instance and followed a few tags for my hobbies and my experience is great. It almost feels like Reddit in that way.
Twitter is a place where people share their thoughts. Mastodon is also a place (well, places, but that's irrelevant) where people share their thoughts.
Sometimes people say interesting things, sometimes not. What's your point?
Mastodon wants to be Twitter, or at least really tries to ape Twitter.
Some people like the big commons experience of Twitter and would like to see that somewhere else.
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