I never used Twitter, but I did sign up for a Mastodon account recently, in case the mass exodus from Twitter makes it an interesting place to be. It used to be common to hop along from one social network to the next, after all!
I like Mastodon but it is a different experience than Twitter. I follow non-famous people with my interests on Mastodon and famous tech people with my interests on Twitter. It is almost like the two services are complementary.
People use twitter because it's NOT inherently segregated. It is a place to find things organically. Aside from Facebook, which had an initial purpose of networking your friends and family, social networks that do this are largely more successful than the ones which federate themselves because users aren't having to explicitly search for conversations that interest them.
Mastodon is just a modern interpretation of Usenet with more moderation.
Mastodon is doing great. Just passed 10 million users a while ago and now has a sustained network effect of around 2000 users an hour. Numbers aside the community and experience is awesome. No idea how people still use Twitter.
Honestly mastodon was never a replacement for Twitter and it's not even close to the variety Twitter has.On Twitter you can delve into pretty much anything and get the real time events about it whether its, sports, politics, economics or even tech and it's own niche cultures
Nothing come even close to that, mastodon is just a couple of small niches within tech and some news organizations, you won't find anything near to how Twitter works and you won't find anything even close to being relevant as it is.
I personally think most of the complaints that hacker News writes about Twitter, stem from who you follow.It really depends on who you follow, if you find the right people it's going to be your source for what's going on in anything you're interested in.
And unfortunately Elon doesn't seem to be interested in keeping that, he is just interested in milking every last dollar out of it and the result is the platform fighting against its own users.
Unfortunately he also proved something very dystopian while he's doing this:The network effect is so strong that even if you fight against your users? nothing is going to change.
I switched from twitter to Mastodon recently. It isn't a perfect replacement since the network effect keeps user counts low but I've found it generally scratches the same itch.
Should post your mastodon name in your profile, cause he's bought it. Are we all gonna switch, are your favorite people who are on twitter also gonna switch? It's pretty decent, but I have a feeling the network effect is pretty strong. I just asked to open a mastodon account so we'll see.
I think mastodon sucks. I think most people think it sucks, compared to twitter- which they likely already use. Is the friction of having a worse user experience worth moving from twitter, just because Elon is being a twit? I don't think most people care because- what is the value of twitter anyway? Most social media is- you get to hear what your friends think, and respond to them. With twitter it seems to democratize access to influencers. Would you switch to Mastodon if- none of the people you care about are there? I don't think so. And if most of those influencers don't move to other platforms, will those other platforms be covered by tech journalists? No.
After 15 years on Twitter, moved to Mastodon about a month ago (I still have the Twitter account, in case Musk comes to his senses and divests). So far, I'm a fan; it feels a bit like Twitter did in the early days, which is generally better than Twitter today. The mobile clients leave something to be desired, but apparently the Tweetbot people are making one.
I signed up to Mastodon after Elon bought Twitter and I find I use Mastodon far more than I ever used Twitter.
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