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

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

#111

Post by hammyhavoc »

skissane wrote: post #39
FredPret wrote: post #6

Twitter 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…

It's no different to email.

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

#112

Post by sangnoir »

Hamuko wrote: post #90
gcthomas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a poster wants their posts searchable then they hash tag key words. Those who don't want randos searching for vulnerable people they can dogpile onto can have that relative anonymity by avoiding contentious hash tags. It's a feature, although some exTwitterati disagree.

I'm of the #opinion that this isn't a #great #way to #implement #search #inside a #product. #Hopefully #whenever a #service goes #down, #people will #remember to #add the #required #hashtags for #other #people to be able to #find them using #search. #Personally I've seen #very #few #posts on my #Mastodon #feed use #hashtags, so #searching is nigh on #impossible, and I don't #think that's #because they're #avoiding #d…

Keyword spamming has been uncool since the 90s, when search engines were naive. Making every word in your post a keyword defeats the purpose - in Mastodon's case, it also makes it look ugly, I consider that a win

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

#113

Post by rektide »

dasil003 wrote: post #54
suddenclarity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree that "the right people" are on Twitter. I will grant that Twitter has historically been the high water mark for having the largest number of those people in one place, and also that a disproportionate number of people who need broad public reach as an intrinsic part of their career will also be their (eg. celebrities and journalists). But at the same time, being an expert, leader and overall interesting pe…

You can either go hunt down very specific narrow spaces where perhaps some special people have gathered. Or you can go to the site where everyone who wants to be in public having interesting engaging discussions with smart people already are.

There's no comparison. This isn't about audiences nor number of users. It's about the ability for people to form connections. Twitter has been way better of a place to do that, to find & discover new connections to make, in a place everyone sharp already was at.

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

#114

Post by Hamuko »

jghn wrote: post #108
Hamuko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Search, or the lack thereof, is my least favorite thing about the fediverse. The federated nature means it's not feasible to search across all instances the way I can search across all of Twitter.

I mean, the Internet is decentralised and we still have Google and friends. It might be harder to implement than Twitter, but it's surely not "not feasible".

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

#115

Post by dasil003 »

rektide wrote: post #113
dasil003 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that "the right people" are on Twitter. I will grant that Twitter has historically been the high water mark for having the largest number of those people in one place, and also that a disproportionate number of people who need broad public reach as an intrinsic part of their career will also be their (eg. celebrities and journalists). But at the same time, being an expert, leader and overall interesting pe…

You can either go hunt down very specific narrow spaces where perhaps some special people have gathered. Or you can go to the site where everyone who wants to be in public having interesting engaging discussions with smart people already are. There's no comparison. This isn't about audiences nor number of users. It's about the ability for people to form connections. Twitter has been way better of a place to do that,…

Everyone sharp was not on Twitter, there was always a majority that were not. Like I said, in terms of a single platform it was a high water mark, but it is incredible confirmation bias to claim that everyone sharp went to Twitter.

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

#116

Post by stonogo »

skissane wrote: post #85
gcthomas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to join Email? First you have to choose a server ... No wonder email failed to thrive as an open protocol, distributed communication system. It's just too darned hard and unfamiliar to figure out how to join.

In the early days of email, most people got an email account automatically from their work or school. When it went mainstream in the 1990s, most people got an email automatically from their ISP-and a lot of older people (like my parents age, who are in their early-to-mid 70s) still rely on that for their personal email. Then along came independent free email services such as Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail, which either started…

In the early days of social media, most people got an account on the nearest BBS. When it went mainstream in the 1990s, most people automatically got a Facebook account and a lot of older people still rely on that for social media. Then along came independent free social media services such as Twitter/Discord/TikTok...

It's exactly comparable, just a few years down the timeline from email.

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

#117

Post by rektide »

dasil003 wrote: post #115
rektide wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can either go hunt down very specific narrow spaces where perhaps some special people have gathered. Or you can go to the site where everyone who wants to be in public having interesting engaging discussions with smart people already are. There's no comparison. This isn't about audiences nor number of users. It's about the ability for people to form connections. Twitter has been way better of a place to do that,…

Everyone sharp was not on Twitter, there was always a majority that were not. Like I said, in terms of a single platform it was a high water mark, but it is incredible confirmation bias to claim that everyone sharp went to Twitter.

I would never say this for real, but in my head I've always asked, how smart can you be if you're turning your nose up at or not joining in the most interesting open active conversations in the world?

I agree that the majority of the world or even sharp people weren't actually there. But in effect, every other place for conversations was a drop in the bucket compared to Twitter's ocean. Finding some good inspiring informative people to follow, & look up other potentially interesting conversationalists as you go, and you'd be hella winning.

Twitter enabled following & expanding your network intelligently nearly infinitely. Every other place, you will be bound to whomever you can attract.

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

#118

Post by corbulo »

mariusor wrote: post #69
DeathArrow wrote: post #60

The amount of users who care about Mastodon is negligible when compared with the amount of Twitter users. People have already voted and Mastodon got the thumbs down.

I doubt that the vast majority of Twitter users made an active decision of giving Mastodon the thumb down. They just didn't hear of it, or had no impetus to find a different option. I think that's an important distinction.

The format of the fediverse is anti-virality and anti-discovery. It's also anti-index. It's a joke that anyone thinks it could ever compete with Twitter. It's not for a lack of interest or advertising.

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

#119

Post by rapnie »

rvz wrote: post #55
rapnie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. I was off by few million, according to below stats counter. Note that any count is an estimation due to the decentralized nature of the network and instances not counted. I've seen other higher numbers too. https://mastodont.cat/@fediverse/110191027067688818 servers: 21,583 (-17, max: 21,600) users: 8,990,211 (-69,061, max: 9,059,272) MAU: 1,469,800 (-8,596, max: 2,444,236)

I think you are 10 million off, since the monthly active users shows who is actively using the platform on a monthly basis, not total registrations. If I was to bring up Twitter's total registered users to date, it would be close to the billions. That doesn't mean there are billions of users using it monthly, this is why total registered users as a metric is irrelevant. Twitter's DAUs are in the hundreds of millions…

The growth-hacking folks around here should realize that from the perspective of the Fediverse there is no such "contest". This is probably the biggest difference why Twitter is by no means an alternative to Mastodon. There's no need to grow at all costs, move fast and break things, do crazy things to get engagement levels up, no commercial incentives, valuations, VC and shareholders to satisfy. The Fediverse is a network created by people, for people, and it is noticeable in the culture.. if you stop the frantic growth-hacking and take the time to discover it.

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

#120

Post by root_axis »

rektide wrote: post #117
dasil003 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone sharp was not on Twitter, there was always a majority that were not. Like I said, in terms of a single platform it was a high water mark, but it is incredible confirmation bias to claim that everyone sharp went to Twitter.

I would never say this for real, but in my head I've always asked, how smart can you be if you're turning your nose up at or not joining in the most interesting open active conversations in the world? I agree that the majority of the world or even sharp people weren't actually there. But in effect, every other place for conversations was a drop in the bucket compared to Twitter's ocean. Finding some good inspiring in…

> how smart can you be if you're turning your nose up at or not joining in the most interesting open active conversations in the world?

Frankly, I tend towards the opposite view. How smart can you be if you spend any significant amount of time engaged in the worst platform for intelligent conversation on the internet?

Well, clearly there are plenty of smart people in either category, but we can objectively say there are a lot more smart people that don't use twitter than do.

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