5 ms·

"It's not the onboarding, it's how the experience goes a month, or even a year, in." As a techie person, that makes sense, but as a normal user, if the onboard

"It's not the onboarding, it's how the experience goes a month, or even a year, in." As a techie person, that makes sense, but as a normal user, if the onboarding isn't simple and easy enough, users won't make it to a month or year of using the service. If Mastadon is too complex to attract critical mass of users to achieve a competitive network effect, it will not replace Twitter.

shortformblog 4y ago
My point is that Mastodon is being judged for not focusing on the easy part. And I'm convinced that Mastodon does not need to be a Twitter replacement to be a success. That is an important distinction that we should concede. It just needs to be a vibrant network that lots of people like using to succeed.
- friedman23 4y ago
  Building good onboarding is not easy and it's quite tedious work. It's also extremely important work that is frequently ignored because of how tedious and thankless it is. Why is it important? Onboarding is the single place in a product that every user is guaranteed to experience at least once. Small changes to onboarding can have effects on user retention like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane. I'm not surprised an app with no profit motive behind it doesn't focus on this kind of work. It's very hard to motivate yourself to do it if it's not your job.
  - shortformblog 4y ago
    But in the scope of an open source project user retention is not always the most important thing. One could argue that pre-2010 Twitter itself is proof that not having the slickest onboarding path is not something that will prevent success. Onboarding can be improved and reinforced over time. Infrastructure is much more complex and building it first prevents a fake-it-until-you-make-it mindset.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  Onboarding for a federated network is not easy. Answering "which server should I set up on" is almost inherently difficult and mired in politics. The issue is that advice has a centralizing effect. If it becomes common wisdom that a given server is the best and everyone joins it, then decentralization is over. This is an issue that neither a centralized service nor a pure p2p service has (e.g. Patchbay/SSB).
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Only if your important metric on which to join is its politics. If, instead, your goal is professional, eg https://infosec.exchange/ https://infosec.exchange/ or https://mstdn.science/ https://mstdn.science/ for microbiology, the choice becomes much clearer.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      I don't think they meant big-P Politics in the sense of political affiliations, but politics in the sense of intra-group and inter-group dynamics.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      Clicked on the latter link. Found no microbiology, just lots of anti-musk and leftist activist commentary. This might be an example of the Vote phenomena where only people quite unhappy with the previous big place leave, which means the new place will end up with a very big skew...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - fragmede 4y ago
        Ah sorry I should have linked to the local posts page instead of the bare url, which brings you to the federated stream, which automatically pulls in all of the dreck. Too late to edit now, but if you go to https://mstdn.science/public/local https://mstdn.science/public/local instead, you'll find it's way more science (well, and Xmas) focused. Using that URL no longer pulls in diatribes from general topic servers where that kind of thing is encourage like mastodon.social. It's not 100% absolutely totally politics free but the SNR is way higher. Dr Fauci is a fellow at the American Academy of Microbiology so it's only natural he comes up on a server focusing on microbiology. One even wished him a Happy Birthday (Dec 24)! Another good one seems to be https://sciences.social/public/local https://sciences.social/public/local
carapace 4y ago
Think about it as a filter: the early adopters are folks who are at least smart enough to join a Mastodon server. (And BTW that's really a low bar. A friend of mine was talking the other day about "the pain of switching from Twitter to Mastodon" and I had to stop him. You just click some buttons and type a bit. You don't even have to get out of your chair!? I am always reminded of the Jetsons arguing over who is going to push the button to make dinner. Anyway...) > If Mastadon (sic) is too complex to attract critical mass of users to achieve a competitive network effect, I would say it already has attracted critical mass of users, eh? > it will not replace Twitter. Question the assumption that it should?
maxbond 4y ago
Mastadon is not a big tent community like Twitter. It's not a tech company seeking to attract every user on the planet. It's a toolkit for building communities. People will join because the communities they want to participate in are there (which eliminates the supposed dilemma of "which instance should I join?" - this is only a problem for people fleeing Twitter and looking for safe harbor, not for people discovering it organically). They'll stay because it's a good toolkit and they want to join more communities. Or those things won't turn out to be true and it will fade away, nothing is guaranteed, but if you judge it based on whether it is Twitter, you're missing the value proposition. In my view, having everyone in the same tent is one of the mistakes Twitter made; it doesn't need to be replicated. It created opportunities for messages intended for a certain community at a certain time to be taken out of that context and misinterpreted to fuel flamewars. It made it possible for there to be this spectacle of the "main character" who was ridiculed for day and then tossed aside.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  This. Facebook's founding premise wasn't easy onboarding. It was getting laid at Harvard. And then getting laid by someone who knew someone at Harvard, or another selective-admissions university. The initial founding cohort was one that engendered strong aspiration of others to join that group, though of course, in others joining the group, the specific appeal waned. A loss in per node value however was offset largely by the network value of the group as a whole. (I've argued that this dynamic of balancing network value with network costs is key to how social networks grow, are limited, and ultimately decline. In particular, each new member adds a variable value (not all nodes are created equal) but a fairly uniform cost, in the form of additional friction, information overload, and the like. A large-scale network attacks those costs ruthlessly through hygiene functions, including content moderation and the like.)
  - trenning 4y ago
    I also remember when Snapchat purposely obfuscated features in the UI and was designed to not cater to the “Facebook boomer” audience. Bad onboarding and complexity was a growth feature.
SyzygistSix 4y ago
At the risk of sounding like the snob that I am, isn't that a selling point for Mastodon? Keeping the complete morons out by making it slightly difficult or requiring a modicum of effort is a big plus, as far as I am concerned.
- charlie0 4y ago
  Yes, this is definitely a plus. Not everything should be hard to use, but one must admit even small barriers means only a certain type of person will use it. As someone in the minority, these are nice spaces.

shortformblog 4y ago

My point is that Mastodon is being judged for not focusing on the easy part. And I'm convinced that Mastodon does not need to be a Twitter replacement to be a success. That is an important distinction that we should concede. It just needs to be a vibrant network that lots of people like using to succeed.

friedman23 4y ago
Building good onboarding is not easy and it's quite tedious work. It's also extremely important work that is frequently ignored because of how tedious and thankless it is. Why is it important? Onboarding is the single place in a product that every user is guaranteed to experience at least once. Small changes to onboarding can have effects on user retention like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane. I'm not surprised an app with no profit motive behind it doesn't focus on this kind of work. It's very hard to motivate yourself to do it if it's not your job.
- shortformblog 4y ago
  But in the scope of an open source project user retention is not always the most important thing. One could argue that pre-2010 Twitter itself is proof that not having the slickest onboarding path is not something that will prevent success. Onboarding can be improved and reinforced over time. Infrastructure is much more complex and building it first prevents a fake-it-until-you-make-it mindset.
im3w1l 4y ago
Onboarding for a federated network is not easy. Answering "which server should I set up on" is almost inherently difficult and mired in politics. The issue is that advice has a centralizing effect. If it becomes common wisdom that a given server is the best and everyone joins it, then decentralization is over. This is an issue that neither a centralized service nor a pure p2p service has (e.g. Patchbay/SSB).
- fragmede 4y ago
  Only if your important metric on which to join is its politics. If, instead, your goal is professional, eg https://infosec.exchange/ https://infosec.exchange/ or https://mstdn.science/ https://mstdn.science/ for microbiology, the choice becomes much clearer.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    I don't think they meant big-P Politics in the sense of political affiliations, but politics in the sense of intra-group and inter-group dynamics.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    Clicked on the latter link. Found no microbiology, just lots of anti-musk and leftist activist commentary. This might be an example of the Vote phenomena where only people quite unhappy with the previous big place leave, which means the new place will end up with a very big skew...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Ah sorry I should have linked to the local posts page instead of the bare url, which brings you to the federated stream, which automatically pulls in all of the dreck. Too late to edit now, but if you go to https://mstdn.science/public/local https://mstdn.science/public/local instead, you'll find it's way more science (well, and Xmas) focused. Using that URL no longer pulls in diatribes from general topic servers where that kind of thing is encourage like mastodon.social. It's not 100% absolutely totally politics free but the SNR is way higher. Dr Fauci is a fellow at the American Academy of Microbiology so it's only natural he comes up on a server focusing on microbiology. One even wished him a Happy Birthday (Dec 24)! Another good one seems to be https://sciences.social/public/local https://sciences.social/public/local

carapace 4y ago

Think about it as a filter: the early adopters are folks who are at least smart enough to join a Mastodon server. (And BTW that's really a low bar. A friend of mine was talking the other day about "the pain of switching from Twitter to Mastodon" and I had to stop him. You just click some buttons and type a bit. You don't even have to get out of your chair!? I am always reminded of the Jetsons arguing over who is going to push the button to make dinner. Anyway...) > If Mastadon (sic) is too complex to attract critical mass of users to achieve a competitive network effect, I would say it already has attracted critical mass of users, eh? > it will not replace Twitter. Question the assumption that it should?

maxbond 4y ago

Mastadon is not a big tent community like Twitter. It's not a tech company seeking to attract every user on the planet. It's a toolkit for building communities. People will join because the communities they want to participate in are there (which eliminates the supposed dilemma of "which instance should I join?" - this is only a problem for people fleeing Twitter and looking for safe harbor, not for people discovering it organically). They'll stay because it's a good toolkit and they want to join more communities. Or those things won't turn out to be true and it will fade away, nothing is guaranteed, but if you judge it based on whether it is Twitter, you're missing the value proposition. In my view, having everyone in the same tent is one of the mistakes Twitter made; it doesn't need to be replicated. It created opportunities for messages intended for a certain community at a certain time to be taken out of that context and misinterpreted to fuel flamewars. It made it possible for there to be this spectacle of the "main character" who was ridiculed for day and then tossed aside.

dredmorbius 4y ago
This. Facebook's founding premise wasn't easy onboarding. It was getting laid at Harvard. And then getting laid by someone who knew someone at Harvard, or another selective-admissions university. The initial founding cohort was one that engendered strong aspiration of others to join that group, though of course, in others joining the group, the specific appeal waned. A loss in per node value however was offset largely by the network value of the group as a whole. (I've argued that this dynamic of balancing network value with network costs is key to how social networks grow, are limited, and ultimately decline. In particular, each new member adds a variable value (not all nodes are created equal) but a fairly uniform cost, in the form of additional friction, information overload, and the like. A large-scale network attacks those costs ruthlessly through hygiene functions, including content moderation and the like.)
- trenning 4y ago
  I also remember when Snapchat purposely obfuscated features in the UI and was designed to not cater to the “Facebook boomer” audience. Bad onboarding and complexity was a growth feature.

SyzygistSix 4y ago

At the risk of sounding like the snob that I am, isn't that a selling point for Mastodon? Keeping the complete morons out by making it slightly difficult or requiring a modicum of effort is a big plus, as far as I am concerned.

charlie0 4y ago
Yes, this is definitely a plus. Not everything should be hard to use, but one must admit even small barriers means only a certain type of person will use it. As someone in the minority, these are nice spaces.