https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics 2023-04-15: Active Users 1199771 2023-03-15: Active Users 1247487
oh my god a product isn't growing, it must be garbage
I agree
Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
31–40 of 136 posts
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#32Twitter has one killer feature: lots of users. Everything else is just detail.
This is definitely the moat against having another Twitter but a lot of things have a lots of users.
There's something else about it, a culture which tells what people should expect from it maybe. There must be something else because anyone with lot's of users is supposed to be able to inflate and take over everything but this is not happening.
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#33Having switched to my own Mastodon host (https://social.mailpace.com/@paul), there are two huge differences:
1. I (almost) only see content and topics from people I follow. Which means everything is specific to the interests of the people I choose to follow, and that list needs to be curated well
2. There are no ads, anywhere. Nothing. It’s so strange to experience this and so refreshing
It’s definitely a little quieter than Twitter, which is also quite nice. You can read your feed once or twice a day and be caught up.
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#34Earlier 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 depends on the industry. The ones I'm following mainly are: infosec - almost every single follow I had is on mastodon, and gamedev - different people but there's still a big crowd.
Then there's "weird tech", which was already on mastodon. (Tube time, foone, etc.)
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#35Both Mastodon and Twitter have over complicated UIs to be true Subreply replacements.
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#36Most of these comments show a different profound sense of humor failure.
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#37Twitter 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?
I would suggest most people don’t care about broadcasting or having a conversation. They want to get “important” information from people they’re familiar with (news services, celebrities, etc).
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#38Earlier 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?
Why are you posting on HN instead of reddit then? It's much larger after all.
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#39Twitter has one killer feature: lots of users. Everything else is just detail.
Twitter is easier for new users to join. If you aren’t on Twitter and want to be (or have left and want to give it another try), the flow to create a new account is really easy - go to twitter.com, and then the sign-up flow is pretty standard, something almost everyone nowadays is familiar with.
Want to join Mastodon? First you have to choose an instance - there are so many to choose from. If you are joining Mastodon because a lot of people you know/follow already have, it makes the choice easier-just join whichever one they are on-but then what happens if it is closed to new registrations? Whereas, if you just heard about this Mastodon thing and want to check it out, a lot of people (especially your average non-technical person) presented with “choose an instance” are going to respond “er, this thing looks too complicated, I can’t be bothered”
Re: Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
#40[deleted]