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Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

theguardian.com

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Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#111

Post by VectorLock »

_chu1 wrote: post #100
VectorLock wrote: post #26

People used to think the network effect for MySpace and Friendster were insurmountable. I played around with Mastodon last night and I think it has some bad but not insurmountable ergonomic wrinkles, but I worry its decentralization will prevent it from ever becoming mainstream. Centralization makes it easier to deal with "bad" actors. Also Discovery is a huge problem: how do I discover people I know? How do content…

"Bad" actors don't need to be dealt with, just block them. Content creators get discovered just like on Twitter, a link.

Block each of a million individual spam bots manually. I'll wait.

The obvious retort is "I just block everything by default." You have now closed yourself off and the spambots have won.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#112

Post by chipgap98 »

beanjuiceII wrote: post #64

70k users doesn't seem like that many...and I am not sure I'd call them "users" yet, technically I'm a "user" but I checked it out for a few months here and there and don't plan on ever going back. The entire experience felt really clunky to me and moving the pin seems like a tough pull that would take quite awhile. but you know just my opinion!

A small fraction of Twitter's users create most of the value of the Twitter network. Given that, I think the interesting question is what segment do those 70k fall into?

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#113

Post by cmrdporcupine »

VectorLock wrote: post #105
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should think of it more as multiple places joined together rather than as one place spread out. It's more like the old BBS networks of old, like FidoNET, etc. And it has a similar vibe to that. I like it for this reason. If you go in expecting Twitter, you will be disappointed. That's not what it is.

FidoNET (got I loved FidoNET) had a central coordinating authority, you had to get on a nodelist. With Mastodon it gets incrementally harder to just add someone. Are they on the same Mastodon instance as me? Does my Mastodon instance federate the Mastodon instance they're on? Is this handled client side with multiple identities? Now how do I handle these multiple identities, so I broadcast "toots" (cringe) to all of…

I don't get it.. So far I've been able to add anybody on Mastodon. I'm on indieweb.social, but most of the people I'm following are elsewhere. Seems to work fine. Yes, it isn't spoonfeeding me contacts or content like Twitter wants to, but that's also a good thing. I see a lot less bullsh*t.

Also almost nobody I've come across actually says "toots" -- they just say "posts" :-)

The equivalent of the FidoNET nodelist would basically be whatever the most popular Mastodon servers are choosing to federate with. It seems in practice to be more of a consensus driven thing, but has the same net effect. We'll see if it scales.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#114

Post by VectorLock »

defulmere wrote: post #56
VectorLock wrote: post #26

People used to think the network effect for MySpace and Friendster were insurmountable. I played around with Mastodon last night and I think it has some bad but not insurmountable ergonomic wrinkles, but I worry its decentralization will prevent it from ever becoming mainstream. Centralization makes it easier to deal with "bad" actors. Also Discovery is a huge problem: how do I discover people I know? How do content…

> Also Discovery is a huge problem: how do I discover people I know? How do content creators who want to build an audience (and so create content that would attract users to the platform) get discovered? Hashtags play a huge role on Mastodon - discover people by following hashtags and include hashtags in your posts so that people can discover you.

I don't think the hashtags are a great experience. Common hashtags get overloaded with junk, how do you know which hashtags to use, you need to register with some external service (and find out about it) like fediverse.info which I've found to be a pretty clunky experience. These are the kind of ergonomic wrinkles I was thinking about.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#115

Post by akavel »

samizdis wrote: post #38
piuvas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that Mastodon runs on ActivityPub, which means that the point is to divide users into different servers. For example, when everyone joined mastodon.social, the balance tipped and a lot of users lost access. Concentrating users into a single instance is not what's supposed to happen. Ideally, you wouldn't want to go through joinmastodon.org and join the highest ranking server since that would central…

I'd be interested to see what might happen if quality daily/weekly news publications, science journals, academic institutions, professional bodies (representing educators, medics, dentists, climate scientists, mathematicians etc) were to set up and run Mastodon instances. Seems like a possible way to encourage a return to the old-school newsgroup discussion communities; to bring focus and avoid the chaff clogging up…

As for one example, a fairly well known body has set up an official Mastodon server half a year ago:

https://social.network.europa.eu

"EU Voice is the official ActivityPub microblogging platform of the EU institutions, bodies and agencies (EUIs). Together with EU Video, it is part of an alternative social media pilot program proposed, and provided by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). The pilot program contributes to the European Union’s strategy for data and digital sovereignty that aims to foster Europe’s independence in the digital world.

EU Voice provides EUIs with privacy-friendly microblogging accounts that they typically use for the purposes of press and public relations activities."

A list of the official accounts present there: https://social.network.europa.eu/explore

A stream of recent activity from all the accounts on the instance: https://social.network.europa.eu/public

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#116

Post by remram »

jstx1 wrote: post #77

Can someone explain how Mastodon works? Right now I can sign up at twitter.com and get to see and talk to everyone else who has signed up - where do I sign up for Mastodon and do I get to interact with everyone else who has done the same? (the fact that this needs to be explained at all should already be a hint that it will never be mainstream)

> the fact that this needs to be explained at all should already be a hint that it will never be mainstream

Ah yes, because users are incapable of learning anything at all

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#117

Post by buovjaga »

70k probably comes from this posted on 30 Oct: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109254422325596095

Increase since 27 Oct Twitter deal closing seems to be over 200k at this point: https://the-federation.info/mastodon

Another stats page for fediverse in general: https://fediverse.observer/stats

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#118

Post by cmrdporcupine »

VectorLock wrote: post #108
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't need to be mainstream, nor do I want to be mainstream. I just use it to follow a number of interesting people and to write my thoughts here and there. A bit like how Twitter was in its early days. (Except without the stupid short word limits which encouraged pithy one liners.) I don't need it to have celebrities or big media organizations. That is literally the worst part of Twitter. I don't need my mom on…

Sounds like you're happy with a vBulletin / blog experience. 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.

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.

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#119

Post by remram »

multiplegeorges wrote: post #90
vander_elst wrote: post #12

That's about 0.018% of total twitter user base (assuming total user base = 396.5 Million, 0.018 = 100*70K/396.5M). In relative numbers that's very little.

How many users generate content and value for Twitter? Maybe 500k/day? It's a lot in terms of value generation.

Do we know if the 70k are part of those? Do we know if they are stopping using their Twitter accounts now that they have Mastodon accounts?

Re: Mastodon gained 70k users after Musk’s Twitter takeover

#120

Post by remram »

Pxtl wrote: post #41

I got a mastodon account on the mastodon.social instance years ago and took another look recently. I still can't figure it out. I see people say they're moving to mastodon, try to search for them on the platform, and find nothing. Possibly they're on another instance that's not searchable from mastodon.social, or their name is different, or the search is bad... But the end result is I can't find anybody there.

Maybe they are lying about it. When I announced I was getting a Mastodon account, I linked it, I didn't leave people to guess.
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