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I'm glad to see competition. With the winner take all nature of social media, innovation is very difficult. Has the network effect of Twitter been seriously di

by seneca 4y ago

I'm glad to see competition. With the winner take all nature of social media, innovation is very difficult. Has the network effect of Twitter been seriously disrupted at this point? I know a lot of folks who disagree with Musk claimed to be leaving for mastodon. I'm curious if there are trustworthy engagement numbers available.

takoid 4y ago
According to Elon, Twitter usage reached another all-time high yesterday: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603852159283445760 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603852159283445760 No idea if similar metrics exist for Mastodon.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > According to Elon… I mean, of course?
  - takoid 4y ago
    Whoops. I missed the "trustworthy" part of the parent comment.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I actually believe this (probably the only thing I believe Elon says). As a user of both Mastodon and Twitter, and a solid Elon-hater, I’ve been wanting to leave Twitter ever since he took over. But it is simply impossible to look away from this garbage fire. Every day I log on to twitter hoping to see the flames go up, and I simply can’t stop it, no matter how hard I try. I believe this to be true for more people. Although, if this is the main driver for the increased numbers, then it is hardly sustainable. There is only so much fuel a garbage fire can consume before it dies out.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > No idea if similar metrics exist for Mastodon. Monthly Active Users 2.1M+9% Servers Up 8.8K+46% Data collected by crawling all accessible Mastodon servers on Dec 15, 2022. https://joinmastodon.org/about https://joinmastodon.org/about Despite restoring some of the banned Twitter accounts, Twitter is still throwing a "Warning: this link may be unsafe" alert for Mastodon links, which seems to be a sign that they're afraid of people leaving and trying to stop them. Twitter was/is also preventing people from adding their Mastodon handle to their Twitter profile.
CharlesW 4y ago
> Has the network effect of Twitter been seriously disrupted at this point? My feeling as a long-time user is "no". That being said, we know Musk has no problem "spinning the truth", so as you imply it seems unlikely that we'll ever get trustworthy metrics again unless Musk were to allow independent auditors. However, conversations have become boringly "meta" (lots of hot takes this morning about Musk unbanning everyone he banned), I'm getting tons of spam (where I got almost none in the years before the Musk-quisition), and the quality of the advertising I'm seeing has plummeted. The primary thing Musk has going for him right now is that there's nowhere to go.
lapcat 4y ago
> Has the network effect of Twitter been seriously disrupted at this point? In my niche of Apple platform software developers, it's definitely been disrupted. The migration from Twitter to Mastodon has been accelerating, especially in the past few days. A lot of abandoned Twitter accounts. A significant number of these people had been on Twitter for over a decade. Overall, it's not the total user base that matters, it's the prolific tweeters who matter, because most Twitter users are quiet consumers of tweets. There's nothing to consume if the tweeters leave... except Musk's own tweets, if you're into that. Some of the people abandoning Twitter include developers of 3rd party Twitter clients and browser extensions, so that's going to matter a bit to the general user base. Also, alienating software developers isn't going to be great for any future hiring that Twitter may need, if it ever crawls back from the financial brink.
- rvz 4y ago
  So the screeching voices of the minority techies that have 'left' with the remaining 200M+ daily actives normal users, still on Twitter every day then. This so-called 'disruption' has been greatly exaggerated and has hardly made a dent on Twitter.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > So the screeching voices This kind of comment degrades the conversation on HN. Please follow the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
pmyteh 4y ago
I think it's best to see Twitter as a network of networks. Some of those networks have moved (or at least lost enough members to Mastodon/Tumblr/wherever that the network effects are no longer strong for Twitter). Others not. I'm an academic in computational political communication. I wasn't fond of Twitter before the move, but was there largely because my professional network was. Most or all of them are now on Mastodon, so the network effect driving me there has gone (and I've cheerfully left). My wife is an author, and book Twitter is mostly still there. Ditto the journalists. I mean, my part of the job world was never on LinkedIn - while for others it was indispensable. This feels like the same.

by seneca 4y ago

takoid 4y ago

According to Elon, Twitter usage reached another all-time high yesterday: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603852159283445760 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603852159283445760 No idea if similar metrics exist for Mastodon.

CharlesW 4y ago
> According to Elon… I mean, of course?
- takoid 4y ago
  Whoops. I missed the "trustworthy" part of the parent comment.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I actually believe this (probably the only thing I believe Elon says). As a user of both Mastodon and Twitter, and a solid Elon-hater, I’ve been wanting to leave Twitter ever since he took over. But it is simply impossible to look away from this garbage fire. Every day I log on to twitter hoping to see the flames go up, and I simply can’t stop it, no matter how hard I try. I believe this to be true for more people. Although, if this is the main driver for the increased numbers, then it is hardly sustainable. There is only so much fuel a garbage fire can consume before it dies out.
lapcat 4y ago
> No idea if similar metrics exist for Mastodon. Monthly Active Users 2.1M+9% Servers Up 8.8K+46% Data collected by crawling all accessible Mastodon servers on Dec 15, 2022. https://joinmastodon.org/about https://joinmastodon.org/about Despite restoring some of the banned Twitter accounts, Twitter is still throwing a "Warning: this link may be unsafe" alert for Mastodon links, which seems to be a sign that they're afraid of people leaving and trying to stop them. Twitter was/is also preventing people from adding their Mastodon handle to their Twitter profile.

CharlesW 4y ago

> Has the network effect of Twitter been seriously disrupted at this point? My feeling as a long-time user is "no". That being said, we know Musk has no problem "spinning the truth", so as you imply it seems unlikely that we'll ever get trustworthy metrics again unless Musk were to allow independent auditors. However, conversations have become boringly "meta" (lots of hot takes this morning about Musk unbanning everyone he banned), I'm getting tons of spam (where I got almost none in the years before the Musk-quisition), and the quality of the advertising I'm seeing has plummeted. The primary thing Musk has going for him right now is that there's nowhere to go.

lapcat 4y ago

> Has the network effect of Twitter been seriously disrupted at this point? In my niche of Apple platform software developers, it's definitely been disrupted. The migration from Twitter to Mastodon has been accelerating, especially in the past few days. A lot of abandoned Twitter accounts. A significant number of these people had been on Twitter for over a decade. Overall, it's not the total user base that matters, it's the prolific tweeters who matter, because most Twitter users are quiet consumers of tweets. There's nothing to consume if the tweeters leave... except Musk's own tweets, if you're into that. Some of the people abandoning Twitter include developers of 3rd party Twitter clients and browser extensions, so that's going to matter a bit to the general user base. Also, alienating software developers isn't going to be great for any future hiring that Twitter may need, if it ever crawls back from the financial brink.

rvz 4y ago
So the screeching voices of the minority techies that have 'left' with the remaining 200M+ daily actives normal users, still on Twitter every day then. This so-called 'disruption' has been greatly exaggerated and has hardly made a dent on Twitter.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > So the screeching voices This kind of comment degrades the conversation on HN. Please follow the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pmyteh 4y ago

I think it's best to see Twitter as a network of networks. Some of those networks have moved (or at least lost enough members to Mastodon/Tumblr/wherever that the network effects are no longer strong for Twitter). Others not. I'm an academic in computational political communication. I wasn't fond of Twitter before the move, but was there largely because my professional network was. Most or all of them are now on Mastodon, so the network effect driving me there has gone (and I've cheerfully left). My wife is an author, and book Twitter is mostly still there. Ditto the journalists. I mean, my part of the job world was never on LinkedIn - while for others it was indispensable. This feels like the same.