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I think Mastodon is going to crash and burn just like 100 other clones before it (remember the black and white artistic FB clone by hipster cycle manufacturer,

I think Mastodon is going to crash and burn just like 100 other clones before it (remember the black and white artistic FB clone by hipster cycle manufacturer, or App.NET), but in process its going to teach a lot of wide-eyed naive optimists about the sad reality of human nature, and need for things like moderation, rules etc.

narrowrail 9y ago
The idea that it has never worked before so it will never work at all has been debunked WRT internet services too many times to count. Mastodon is part of the decentralized social web that doesn't need to profit, nor grow large to provide value to its members.
zanny 9y ago
It is still ostatus. It won't go away. Mastodon is just a pretty GUI for it.
djsumdog 9y ago
And Linux will never be more than a hobby operating system. It's just a toy. You can't run real servers and embedded apps off of it. /s
- acdha 9y ago
  A better comparison is Linux on the desktop: I've been assured it's been about to happen for the last two decades by programmers who thought the hard part was writing a kernel when in reality it was all of “boring” work offering a decent user experience. Similarly, anyone who starts a social project and talks about tech is almost certain to fail, no matter whether they're a bunch of OSS developers or Google, unless they have put even more time into the actual key problem: good user experience. If you don't have a solid story for how people will find other people they want to interact with, what reasons they have to interact in the first place, and how you'll deal with abuse, nothing else will matter.
throwanem 9y ago
> the black and white artistic FB clone by hipster cycle manufacturer Ello?
- aub3bhat 9y ago
  Thanks, I actually tried searching for it (rather than writing how I remembered it), but it was too difficult to find.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Wait, was it actually that? I thought I was making a joke...
smacktoward 9y ago
I've been deeply skeptical of these types of projects in the past. I feel like I need to stay on top of new developments, though, so when Mastodon popped up I found an instance and set up an account there to play around with. So far, it's... good! Really good. I've had interesting conversations with interesting people from around the world. Unlike Twitter, which has evolved into a one-way mechanism for celebrities and #brands to shout at you, Mastodon/OStatus is grass-rootsy enough to feel personal. And they've addressed some of the broken design decisions that made Twitter what it is today (which I outlined here a few years ago: https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter), so there's some hope that it will be able to retain its charm. None of which is to say that it's perfect, or even close to perfect. But it's good enough to be interesting, which is something I haven't seen in the social-networking space in a long, long time.

narrowrail 9y ago

The idea that it has never worked before so it will never work at all has been debunked WRT internet services too many times to count. Mastodon is part of the decentralized social web that doesn't need to profit, nor grow large to provide value to its members.

zanny 9y ago

It is still ostatus. It won't go away. Mastodon is just a pretty GUI for it.

djsumdog 9y ago

And Linux will never be more than a hobby operating system. It's just a toy. You can't run real servers and embedded apps off of it. /s

acdha 9y ago
A better comparison is Linux on the desktop: I've been assured it's been about to happen for the last two decades by programmers who thought the hard part was writing a kernel when in reality it was all of “boring” work offering a decent user experience. Similarly, anyone who starts a social project and talks about tech is almost certain to fail, no matter whether they're a bunch of OSS developers or Google, unless they have put even more time into the actual key problem: good user experience. If you don't have a solid story for how people will find other people they want to interact with, what reasons they have to interact in the first place, and how you'll deal with abuse, nothing else will matter.

throwanem 9y ago

> the black and white artistic FB clone by hipster cycle manufacturer Ello?

aub3bhat 9y ago
Thanks, I actually tried searching for it (rather than writing how I remembered it), but it was too difficult to find.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Wait, was it actually that? I thought I was making a joke...

smacktoward 9y ago

I've been deeply skeptical of these types of projects in the past. I feel like I need to stay on top of new developments, though, so when Mastodon popped up I found an instance and set up an account there to play around with. So far, it's... good! Really good. I've had interesting conversations with interesting people from around the world. Unlike Twitter, which has evolved into a one-way mechanism for celebrities and #brands to shout at you, Mastodon/OStatus is grass-rootsy enough to feel personal. And they've addressed some of the broken design decisions that made Twitter what it is today (which I outlined here a few years ago: https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter), so there's some hope that it will be able to retain its charm. None of which is to say that it's perfect, or even close to perfect. But it's good enough to be interesting, which is something I haven't seen in the social-networking space in a long, long time.