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I used StatusNet when it was identi.ca for quite some time, specially because back then Twitter really allowed 3rd party clients and with multi-protocol clients

by reidrac 11y ago

I used StatusNet when it was identi.ca for quite some time, specially because back then Twitter really allowed 3rd party clients and with multi-protocol clients was really easy to use both. When I was using identi.ca it was pretty much about Linux, Open Source, and basically that was it. I never got the same level of interaction I can enjoy in Twitter; but that's not a technical issue, is just that a social network needs people to interact and identi.ca back then (and I suspect GNU Social today) was not used enough to make it interesting for me. I tried, because you can argue that is silly to complain about not enough people using a social network if you don't start using it yourself; but at some point identi.ca got flooded with bots and people "abusing" the API instead of using the social network, and I gave up. I love twitter because I can meet people based on common interests (eg, 8-bit computers), and also broadcast about my current projects (not sure who finds that interesting though). To be honest, things should get really bad with Twitter for me to leave it, but then I don't think there will be a substitute (and if there's one, having my own infrastructure would be very low priority, in the same way I don't host my own XMPP server).

Goladus 11y ago
> I tried, because you can argue that is silly to complain about not enough people using a social network if you don't start using it yourself; No, not at all. That's the Network Effect [1] in a nutshell. Practically, what this means is that apart from possibly instagram, microblogging is twitter's market to lose. So long as twitter does not abuse the trust users have placed in them to manage the service, then upstart competitors (whether centralized or decentralized) will find it difficult to overcome the network advantage. However, if twitter does not honor the informal contract and decides to abuse their power for political or social ends, they will be devaluing their product for a large segment of users. Those betrayed users are more likely to decide en masse to join a network not subject to a centralized autocratic authority. This accusation was in fact recently leveled against them [2], so you may see growing support for politically neutral alternatives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [2] http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/16/exclusive-twitter-shadowbanning-is-real-say-inside-sources/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/16/exclusive-twitter-s...

by reidrac 11y ago

Goladus 11y ago

> I tried, because you can argue that is silly to complain about not enough people using a social network if you don't start using it yourself; No, not at all. That's the Network Effect [1] in a nutshell. Practically, what this means is that apart from possibly instagram, microblogging is twitter's market to lose. So long as twitter does not abuse the trust users have placed in them to manage the service, then upstart competitors (whether centralized or decentralized) will find it difficult to overcome the network advantage. However, if twitter does not honor the informal contract and decides to abuse their power for political or social ends, they will be devaluing their product for a large segment of users. Those betrayed users are more likely to decide en masse to join a network not subject to a centralized autocratic authority. This accusation was in fact recently leveled against them [2], so you may see growing support for politically neutral alternatives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [2] http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/16/exclusive-twitter-shadowbanning-is-real-say-inside-sources/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/16/exclusive-twitter-s...