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Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

aus.social

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Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#11

Post by suddenclarity »

rapnie wrote: post #9
FredPret wrote: post #6

Twitter has one killer feature: lots of users. Everything else is just detail.

Depends what your purpose is. If you want to be a broadcaster, have a message to sell, then there's a larger audience. If you want to have good conversations, you don't need many people. Who talks to millions of people in a lively back and forth?

You want the right people such as experts and industry leaders. Those are on Twitter. If you want to hang with average Joes then you have a random Discord service, forums or anonymous people on Reddit. It's not the features that makes microblogs great.

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#12

Post by oytis »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10
Etesam wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

user growth is almost imperative for social media products. No one wants to be on a dead social media.

for a product with angry VCs breathing down your neck, yes. For a protocol/ecosystem run without profit motive? Not really. IRC has existed for how many decades now? And of course those stats are misleadingly timed given that it's up about 3x compared to a year ago.

From the user's point of view really. Why would I spend time on a social network where few of the people I know or interested in are present?

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#13

Post by fhrow4484 »

rapnie wrote: post #7
Etesam wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

user growth is almost imperative for social media products. No one wants to be on a dead social media.

Strangely enough there's in those few millions there's enough people to have interesting conversations with. ~12 million is larger than population of quite a few countries, where people still manage to have social lives somehow. With just a relatively small amount of followers you'll have engaging conversations on Mastodon/Fediverse. While on Twitter/Birdsite the engagement, unless you are an influencer, is surprisin…

Where did you get the 12 million number from?

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#14

Post by rxhernandez »

rapnie wrote: post #9
FredPret wrote: post #6

Twitter has one killer feature: lots of users. Everything else is just detail.

Depends what your purpose is. If you want to be a broadcaster, have a message to sell, then there's a larger audience. If you want to have good conversations, you don't need many people. Who talks to millions of people in a lively back and forth?

Reddit AMAs

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#15

Post by Hamuko »

rapnie wrote: post #9
FredPret wrote: post #6

Twitter has one killer feature: lots of users. Everything else is just detail.

Depends what your purpose is. If you want to be a broadcaster, have a message to sell, then there's a larger audience. If you want to have good conversations, you don't need many people. Who talks to millions of people in a lively back and forth?

>If you want to have good conversations, you don't need many people.

I still need quite a few of them to have interesting follows. I'm following 180 accounts on Twitter but only 20 on Mastodon. And basically all of those on Mastodon are tech people.

Not that I really want to follow people on Mastodon anyways. I'm hoping that Bluesky is gonna become the go-to Twitter replacement once it opens up.

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#17

Post by Barrin92 »

oytis wrote: post #12
Barrin92 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for a product with angry VCs breathing down your neck, yes. For a protocol/ecosystem run without profit motive? Not really. IRC has existed for how many decades now? And of course those stats are misleadingly timed given that it's up about 3x compared to a year ago.

From the user's point of view really. Why would I spend time on a social network where few of the people I know or interested in are present?

for the same reason you're talking to me here on HN right now. Because a personal community of a 1000 people you vibe with is better than an entropy machine of 100 million. Can you even call something a social network if it makes the people on it anti-social?

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#18

Post by Hamuko »

FredPret wrote: post #6

Twitter has one killer feature: lots of users. Everything else is just detail.

Twitter actually has a bunch of killer features when compared to Mastodon, to a degree where "toots can have a content warning" seems trivial. One massive one being "able to search tweets".

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#19

Post by rapnie »

suddenclarity wrote: post #11
rapnie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what your purpose is. If you want to be a broadcaster, have a message to sell, then there's a larger audience. If you want to have good conversations, you don't need many people. Who talks to millions of people in a lively back and forth?

You want the right people such as experts and industry leaders. Those are on Twitter. If you want to hang with average Joes then you have a random Discord service, forums or anonymous people on Reddit. It's not the features that makes microblogs great.

> It's not the features that makes microblogs great.

Agreed. It is organic interaction, which you get at the Fediverse. Much more so than on Twitter is my anecdotal observation. On Twitter you have to hone your messages in hope the algorithms make you 'go viral'. There are quite a few experts, academics, scientists and journalists migrating to the Fediverse. Increasingly some of the industry leaders too. I do not know if that is good for the dynamics. It is quite refreshing to have a social network where people don't try to become influencers.

Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)

#20

Post by Hamuko »

Barrin92 wrote: post #17
oytis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the user's point of view really. Why would I spend time on a social network where few of the people I know or interested in are present?

for the same reason you're talking to me here on HN right now. Because a personal community of a 1000 people you vibe with is better than an entropy machine of 100 million. Can you even call something a social network if it makes the people on it anti-social?

Is Hacker News a "personal community"? As far as I know, there's hundreds of thousands of daily visitors.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581

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