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Why is Mastodon still hoping that the Great Unwashed Masses will come up with an explanation for the technical guts of their platform? It's been six years and a

Why is Mastodon still hoping that the Great Unwashed Masses will come up with an explanation for the technical guts of their platform? It's been six years and articles still fall over themselves trying to explain what it is, and usually land on a variant of "it's just like Twitter, but more complicated." What I'm getting at is that Mastodon has a serious UX and communication problem, because they're not able to pitch the platform in a way that laypeople would care. Regular people don't care about the merits of decentralization. What matters is the experience, and Mastodon seems to be trying really hard to look as much like Twitter as possible. But that's a death sentence: Twitter is always going to be the best at being Twitter.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Novel social networks fail to gain traction for all number of issues, of which UI/UX is only one small part. Founding cohort and compelling case is the most critical issue, and tipping points may occur precipitously. The instances of Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit, or of MySpace and Facebook come to mind. I'm not saying that Mastodon doesn't have significant UI/UX issues. I've written on several of these at length on Mastodon. I've addressed at least one in this thread. But its multi-instance aspect really doesn't strike me as a weakness. Anything but. You clearly feel strongly and differently. I doubt we'll progress on this point here and now.
- phailhaus 4y ago
  It's not just the multi-instance aspect, the problem is that Mastodon is trying to look like Twitter. Twitter will always win at the Twitter experience. There's no reason to switch away for normal people.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    In each of the instances I'd listed above, a reason emerged. Sometimes it was pull, but quite often (Usenet -> Web forums, Digg -> Reddit, MySpace -> Facebook), push played a major component: the extant option was increasingly less appealing to users (or providers, see my "Why Usenet Died" analysis for my take on some of the factors: <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_usenet_died/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_use...>). The compelling reasons presently are being provided by Twitter and its present owner, Elon Musk. Nothing's changed in Mastodon's offerings over the past several weeks, but much has changed regarding its attractiveness. Social networks are notoriously tippy, and what matters far more than specific featuresets of either the origin or destination systems. If major users transition, many others will follow. If and when that does occur, this can happen with stunning swiftness. UI/UX are not at present a blocking feature, though as we've both noted, opportunities for improvement exist. I've seen instances with > 3x increase in traffic as noted in this thread: <https://freeradical.zone/@tek/109309036456312761 https://freeradical.zone/@tek/109309036456312761> That's based on available evidence, not hypothetical arguments.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Novel social networks fail to gain traction for all number of issues, of which UI/UX is only one small part. Founding cohort and compelling case is the most critical issue, and tipping points may occur precipitously. The instances of Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit, or of MySpace and Facebook come to mind. I'm not saying that Mastodon doesn't have significant UI/UX issues. I've written on several of these at length on Mastodon. I've addressed at least one in this thread. But its multi-instance aspect really doesn't strike me as a weakness. Anything but. You clearly feel strongly and differently. I doubt we'll progress on this point here and now.

phailhaus 4y ago
It's not just the multi-instance aspect, the problem is that Mastodon is trying to look like Twitter. Twitter will always win at the Twitter experience. There's no reason to switch away for normal people.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  In each of the instances I'd listed above, a reason emerged. Sometimes it was pull, but quite often (Usenet -> Web forums, Digg -> Reddit, MySpace -> Facebook), push played a major component: the extant option was increasingly less appealing to users (or providers, see my "Why Usenet Died" analysis for my take on some of the factors: <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_usenet_died/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_use...>). The compelling reasons presently are being provided by Twitter and its present owner, Elon Musk. Nothing's changed in Mastodon's offerings over the past several weeks, but much has changed regarding its attractiveness. Social networks are notoriously tippy, and what matters far more than specific featuresets of either the origin or destination systems. If major users transition, many others will follow. If and when that does occur, this can happen with stunning swiftness. UI/UX are not at present a blocking feature, though as we've both noted, opportunities for improvement exist. I've seen instances with > 3x increase in traffic as noted in this thread: <https://freeradical.zone/@tek/109309036456312761 https://freeradical.zone/@tek/109309036456312761> That's based on available evidence, not hypothetical arguments.