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Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

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Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#41

Post by jrm4 »

An interesting thing:

Twitter is literally experimenting with being more "Mastodon-like" with "Circles"

Are there any paths or efforts toward the reverse? I know that's not the design but might there be some value, utility, and possibility in a more "centralized" Mastodon?

Specifically, the value of centralization here wouldn't be governance, but analytics. Finding out what people are "mostly talking about" and perhaps getting more attention to bigger names. I know that's not everybody's bag but I think it would be valuable.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#43

Post by kevinmgranger »

na85 wrote: post #40
gargron wrote: post #39

The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow app…

>The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow ap…

I remember early mastodon marketing being criticized for emphasizing federation _too much_, and that it would confuse new users.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#44

Post by art4ur »

betwixthewires wrote: post #12
rvz wrote: post #2

And it is not early days anymore. We have given it enough time to realize the claims as a Twitter alternative and it has simply failed. Twitter had tens of millions of users in its first 6 years. Mastodon is still struggling and considers 20 people as 'trending' . Mastodon is a total failure, and virtually no-one is there or uses it frequently or daily other than the general hyper tech-crowd and that is the fact. Reg…

It's not a failure. This idea that it has to be huge to be a success comes from the instagram, Facebook, twitter and YouTube way of counting success. 100 million views, 10k likes in an hour, 100k followers... these humongous numbers are not normal, and they're not necessary for a rewarding social experience online. In fact I think the opposite is true. Lots of people use the network daily. I do. It's more fun than tw…

It's a total failure. John Mastodon, the CEO and founder of Mastodon, was just fired from the company after their stock prices hit an all time low.

That's not how it works. It's open source and can be forked and improved upon. It doesn't need millions of users to survive and be useful to a lot of us.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#45

Post by sexy_panda »

betwixthewires wrote: post #12
rvz wrote: post #2

And it is not early days anymore. We have given it enough time to realize the claims as a Twitter alternative and it has simply failed. Twitter had tens of millions of users in its first 6 years. Mastodon is still struggling and considers 20 people as 'trending' . Mastodon is a total failure, and virtually no-one is there or uses it frequently or daily other than the general hyper tech-crowd and that is the fact. Reg…

It's not a failure. This idea that it has to be huge to be a success comes from the instagram, Facebook, twitter and YouTube way of counting success. 100 million views, 10k likes in an hour, 100k followers... these humongous numbers are not normal, and they're not necessary for a rewarding social experience online. In fact I think the opposite is true. Lots of people use the network daily. I do. It's more fun than tw…

I agree. Mastodon is more fun to use than Twitter.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#46

Post by naniwaduni »

slater wrote: post #3
rvz wrote: post #2

And it is not early days anymore. We have given it enough time to realize the claims as a Twitter alternative and it has simply failed. Twitter had tens of millions of users in its first 6 years. Mastodon is still struggling and considers 20 people as 'trending' . Mastodon is a total failure, and virtually no-one is there or uses it frequently or daily other than the general hyper tech-crowd and that is the fact. Reg…

Twitter doesn't have to "lose", for Mastodon to "win".

By virtue of the incumbency and respective "business" models, it is possible for Mastodon to not lose even as Twitter wins, while the converse is ... implausible.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#47

Post by shadowfacts »

na85 wrote: post #40
gargron wrote: post #39

The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow app…

>The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow ap…

The sixth sentence on the project homepage: "Joining a server on Mastodon provides you with the power to communicate with any server across the globe."

Not sure how much clearer it gets.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#48

Post by betwixthewires »

sidlls wrote: post #29
betwixthewires wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a failure. This idea that it has to be huge to be a success comes from the instagram, Facebook, twitter and YouTube way of counting success. 100 million views, 10k likes in an hour, 100k followers... these humongous numbers are not normal, and they're not necessary for a rewarding social experience online. In fact I think the opposite is true. Lots of people use the network daily. I do. It's more fun than tw…

The fact that multiple companies have those numbers indicates the numbers are in fact “normal”. What isn’t normal is continuing to insist that the typical person cares enough about the ideology that motivates projects like Mastodon in spite of the literally hundreds and thousands of failed projects indicating the contrary.

I dont know what hundreds of thousands of projects you're talking about, or what ideology for that matter. It isn't about ideology. I can actually talk to hundreds of thousands of people and say whatever I want. Whatever I want. And they can too. And nobody comes in and tells us to do anything. And there's not a bunch of political influencers and journalists coming around trying to tell us what to think, there's no billion dollar names, just people. It is legitimately a better experience.

I don't care what a typical person cares about, that's the point you're not getting. Nobody on fedi does. Nobody on the internet does outside of the stockade. Caring about what other people care about is how you get these monoculture wannabe coca cola commercials that are the mainstream 5 site web. The old internet we have nostalgia for is still there, with modern technology, you just have to go use it. So that's what people like me do.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#49

Post by gargron »

shadowfacts wrote: post #47
na85 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow ap…

The sixth sentence on the project homepage: "Joining a server on Mastodon provides you with the power to communicate with any server across the globe." Not sure how much clearer it gets.

To be fair, that sentence has only been there for a couple days. We redesigned our project homepage completely. Some of the copy is still in flux.

Re: Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter

#50

Post by assetlabel »

gargron wrote: post #39

The author seems under to be under the wrong impression that Mastodon servers are isolated communities (and therefore compares them to subreddits). This is incorrect. Mastodon is a platform where a server of your choosing hosts your account, like an e-mail provider hosting your inbox. From that account, you follow any other account on the network, regardless of which server hosts that account. Everyone you follow app…

This is only true among mastodon servers that connect to each other. As I recall, most servers would not talk to gab's servers.

Further, once you pick a server, if you are kicked off, you lose all your followers because they are following you@thatserver which you cannot get onto anymore.

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