7 ms·

Surprisingly difficult for Joe Public to get on - how to solve that problem?

woodruffw 5y ago
Mastodon is about as easy to create an account on as Twitter (if not easier; Twitter's human verification process is pretty cumbersome). You can sign up here: https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about (Solving the "critical mass of users" problem is left as an exercise to the user.)
- FalconSensei 5y ago
  I use Mastodon as well as Twitter. Even though there are things that I love about it, I can't say it's easier to use or has more appeal than Twitter. I think Twitter is easier for the mass public to join. Go to Twitter.com, put username and password, verify phone number. Done! The screens are cleaner and very intuitive. For mastodon, there's more text and messaging about the differences regarding Twitter, what's the Fediverse, instance rules. So you just landed on the main screen and you have to think about choosing an instance with different number of people, different rules. After you are in, you can't search!! You can only search usernames or hashtags, but that is REALLY cumbersome and ineffective since people don't write "This is my #Twilight #book #review #bookreview URL". If you are not tech/privacy focused, the trending tags are usually not interesting, apart from #caturday I guess?. Even after you are able to follow people, you can't quote-retweet (which is a pro AND a con), and even "retweeting" is cumbersome if you are on someone's profile from another instance. Sharing is also more cumbersome since there's no bookmarklet or chrome extension that I could find, and sites don't have a "share on mastodon" link. The solution was to enable a cross-poster, so I just keep posting on Twitter. About instances: on some main instances, speed is ok, but try to follow some pic focused profiles on smaller instances. It can take like 5~10 seconds for an image to load. And now on the iPhone official app, I can't seem to be able to download pictures anymore, and the option to bookmark a post (not like) is not there, only on the web-mobile version.
sumtechguy 5y ago
The problem is number of users they want to see on that platform. If you want to follow/read/interact with someone you will be there. If not you do not care about it. It is surprisingly hard to make a network of people if your network has no people in it. I had to teach this lesson to several managers over the years 'setup a page where our users can interact'. That turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was getting anyone to actually post anything. Much less interact with each other. That happens a decent amount when you try to move into a space that already has established players.
riffic 5y ago
Running your own email server is pretty difficult but getting an email address somewhere doesn't seem to be a problem with the public anymore. To answer "How to solve that problem?", I'd say don't worry a damn thing about Joe Public.

Mastodon is about as easy to create an account on as Twitter (if not easier; Twitter's human verification process is pretty cumbersome). You can sign up here: https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about (Solving the "critical mass of users" problem is left as an exercise to the user.)

FalconSensei 5y ago
I use Mastodon as well as Twitter. Even though there are things that I love about it, I can't say it's easier to use or has more appeal than Twitter. I think Twitter is easier for the mass public to join. Go to Twitter.com, put username and password, verify phone number. Done! The screens are cleaner and very intuitive. For mastodon, there's more text and messaging about the differences regarding Twitter, what's the Fediverse, instance rules. So you just landed on the main screen and you have to think about choosing an instance with different number of people, different rules. After you are in, you can't search!! You can only search usernames or hashtags, but that is REALLY cumbersome and ineffective since people don't write "This is my #Twilight #book #review #bookreview URL". If you are not tech/privacy focused, the trending tags are usually not interesting, apart from #caturday I guess?. Even after you are able to follow people, you can't quote-retweet (which is a pro AND a con), and even "retweeting" is cumbersome if you are on someone's profile from another instance. Sharing is also more cumbersome since there's no bookmarklet or chrome extension that I could find, and sites don't have a "share on mastodon" link. The solution was to enable a cross-poster, so I just keep posting on Twitter. About instances: on some main instances, speed is ok, but try to follow some pic focused profiles on smaller instances. It can take like 5~10 seconds for an image to load. And now on the iPhone official app, I can't seem to be able to download pictures anymore, and the option to bookmark a post (not like) is not there, only on the web-mobile version.

sumtechguy 5y ago

The problem is number of users they want to see on that platform. If you want to follow/read/interact with someone you will be there. If not you do not care about it. It is surprisingly hard to make a network of people if your network has no people in it. I had to teach this lesson to several managers over the years 'setup a page where our users can interact'. That turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was getting anyone to actually post anything. Much less interact with each other. That happens a decent amount when you try to move into a space that already has established players.

riffic 5y ago

Running your own email server is pretty difficult but getting an email address somewhere doesn't seem to be a problem with the public anymore. To answer "How to solve that problem?", I'd say don't worry a damn thing about Joe Public.