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> How do you connect to millions of people without using Facebook or Twitter? Oh interesting! Let me check out their instance that they linked to: "Find us at
by phailhaus 4y ago
> How do you connect to millions of people without using Facebook or Twitter?
Oh interesting! Let me check out their instance that they linked to: "Find us at https://toot.thoughtworks.com https://toot.thoughtworks.com"
> This is a Mastodon instance solely for employees of Thoughtworks.
Whoops!
In general, I don't see how this helps a company at all to reach the millions of users that they could through Facebook or Twitter. On those platforms, it's automatic and immediate. On Mastodon, it seems like you have to actively court users one at a time? Because ThoughtWorks wasn't even able to reach me, and I read their entire article. I went directly to their instance and learned nothing.
EDIT:
Aha! It turns out that the landing page is a red herring, and you can still click through to the "See What's Happening" page. I don't see how a non-technical user would figure this out and not get immediately discouraged. Linking to the /public page would have made a lot more sense.
- CJefferson 4y agoYes, I am imagine their email server is also just for their employees. What's your point?
- phailhaus 4y agoThey literally link it at the end of the article with "Find us at https://toot.thoughtworks.com https://toot.thoughtworks.com" On a blog post about running your own instance to reach millions of users, why does it turn out that their instance is totally locked down and actually not accessible to anyone?
- robotresearcher 4y agoHere's their public feed, linked from that page. https://toot.thoughtworks.com/public https://toot.thoughtworks.com/public
- phailhaus 4y agoOh man, it took me so long to figure out how you got there. This is dead-on-arrival for nontechnical users.
- dtparr 4y agoMastodon is federated, so users of their instance are able to interact with the wider set of Mastodon instances, much like people with @google.com emails can interact with people with @microsoft.com emails, despite both instances being separately controlled and not open to people outside their respective companies. Not having an account on an instance, in other words, is not the same as it not being accessible.
- alexb_ 4y agoHas anyone ever watched a single person try to understand what you just said? "I have a mastodon account. Why can't I view their mastodon posts? Mastodon is broken". End of story. Platform is done. The fact that people are trying to say this is good enough absolutely infuriates me, and is makes me wonder if people actually know the technical level of the average user, not the programmers they work with.
- CJefferson 4y agoCan you point me to an example of someone saying that? I'd be interested to see it.
- riffic 4y agofederation works just like email. I don't want just anyone to have a whitehouse.gov address (do you?)
- phailhaus 4y agoThen what's the point of the closing line "Find us at https://toot.thoughtworks.com https://toot.thoughtworks.com"?
- riffic 4y agofind me at gmail.com
- phailhaus 4y agoIt's "email me at gmail.com". The article is about replacing a company's usage of Facebook and Twitter with Mastodon. They then link to their Mastodon instance, as if that's where we can find all sorts of external communication, the kind they'd usually have on Facebook. Nope. As a nontechnical user, I am immediately confused and closed the page without learning anything. The idea that a company could "reach millions of users" with Mastodon is ridiculous.
- riffic 4y agoI can reach millions of users, billions potentially, with WordPress. My WordPress is also compatible with Mastodon since I installed the ActivityPub plugin. I understand the federated social web has a technobabble aspect to it. I am sorry you aren't with it but that's honestly not my problem.
- phailhaus 4y agoAnd that's exactly why Mastodon will never reach mass adoption. That's my only point: Mastodon is for techies. It is not and will never be a viable competitor to centralized social media. The idea that "companies should run their own Mastodon instances" as a way to replace Facebook is absurd.
- dugmartin 4y agoIt is also leaking the number ThoughtWorks employees via the server stats on that page.