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> Why the fuck are you still using Twitter? The author clearly doesn't understand the concept of audience. I have thousands of followers on Twitter, just hundr

> Why the fuck are you still using Twitter? The author clearly doesn't understand the concept of audience. I have thousands of followers on Twitter, just hundreds on Mastodon. We can't move, we can only transition and hope others follow. Also, don't expect a lot of people to read your blog, unless you have a very hot take, like this post lol

SamBorick 4y ago
which would you rather have, thousands of people who maybe see your tweets, or a few people who actually engage with what you care about? numbers vs community.
- djbebs 4y ago
  Why do you believe there is more engagement in mastodon than in a platform designed to maximize engagement?
  - SamBorick 4y ago
    I don't believe it, its true. I was on twitter for 7 years. Hundreds of followers, thousands of tweets. Maybe 6 actual replies in that time. I've been on mastodon for 5 years now. I have people I'd genuinely call friends. A community. Regular meaningful engagement with actual humans about the stuff we make and share with each other. Twitter isn't designed for engagement between people. its designed to make money by getting you to engage with twitter as a platform.
  - kevq 4y ago
    I think you misspelled “profit” there. Engagement isn't the driver for the algorithm, profit is. It’s all about showing “fresh” content on every refresh so they have your eyes longer, and therefore more ad revenue. Masto is chronological, so there’s WAY more chance of natural discovery of content. It’s not buried by the algorithm because it doesn’t align with the hot take of the day, or isn't “trending”. I’ve personally found Mastodon to be far more engaging than Twitter, but that’s probably not going to be the se for everyone.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    Twitter is optimized for engagement with twitter, specifically with advertisers on twitter. The site doesn't prioritize your tweets, it prioritizes those likely to drive further engagement (with the site, remember, not with you). Many people with very large followings on twitter have reported that with even 10% or less as many followers on mastodon, they're seeing more engagement in terms of replies and like and boosts than they see on twitter for the same content.
- stiltzkin 4y ago
  See and engage.
bm3719 4y ago
We have to break out of this view count trap if we want to be free of the ills of centralized social media. Maybe instead of views, consider the effect of your words on the outside world. How often does a tweet change your thinking or deeply enlighten you? The rare times something like this sorta happens is in the awkward form of a tweet thread, where it would've been much better as a proper article. Speaking personally, there's blog articles that have vastly changed my view of some part of reality and improved my life.
- waboremo 4y ago
  The view count trap is going to exist and be effective as long as humans feel the need for validation. Let's pretend you have a blog, you're writing on it for years. It's affecting people positively. But nobody ever says a thing about it directly to you, you have no analytics running in the background, no like button. Eventually, you're probably going to stop writing on the blog, feeling it's a waste of time. We can point to popular bloggers all we want, but the fact remains most of them either have some form of view count operating (or likes/claps/whatever gimmick to replicate that "I see you" validation), had rare real life validation based on their blogs (being hired at xyz place because someone said they were a fan... but usually these blogs tend to go abandoned after they get hired), or relied on social networks to encourage them to continue writing their blogs. Until this is solved in a healthier way, we're not really going to be free of view counts.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Validation doesn't necessarily mean view count though - consider citations/WebMention or whatever - a thoughtful post referencing, disputing, discussing your own is surely worth some quite large number of views, in terms of validation.
    - waboremo 4y ago
      Being referenced by someone you look up to is more valuable than a view. But is it really different, when we consider that one view is the reason why that person is referencing your content in the first place? This is why I have a hard time with how many people push against view counts as the ultimate bad. They are just another metric, one we use for validation, but still just a metric. Sure, you might think it's healthier to care about more WebMentions, but what are those when you peel away the layers of branding? I suppose we can't really escape our desperate need to be seen, even in digital space.
Vinnl 4y ago
The author built most of their following on Mastodon (they are one of the folks running one of the larger instances, Fosstodon), and has 22k+ followers there. (And presumably, that audience got it posted here.) Although their goal, given their post history, is not to get lots of people to read their blog - but to start writing, and to potentially have the right people read your blog. (And vice versa, to get the right blogs for them to actuallt get written.)
luxuryballs 4y ago
Plus Twitter is just starting to break out and become interesting, taking on the establishment media, if genuine, is a very healthy idea on Musk's part.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  My Twitter feed is almost entirely dead. There's one person I follow who doesn't want to put in the effort to spin up their own Mastodon server but doesn't want to join anyone else's, and one who worries about censorship by Mastodon moderators (even though it's Musk banning all the journalists), and that's it. I shut Twitter notifications off on my phone because all I still get at group chat spam about fake crypto giveaways and ads for Twitter Blue which I'm pretty sure violates Apple's app store terms. Even the influencer types I follow see higher engagement on Mastodon even if the numbers look smaller, and have thrown in the towel. Twitter's dead and buried.
  - tester457 4y ago
    > Twitter's dead and buried. I think it's actually that your side of the internet and the people you follow are in the tech niche, i.e. people who are conscious about this stuff are the ones who are leaving. But the bulk of users, the people who don't care about technology, the millions of teenagers and memers are all going to stay on twitter.
    - WesSouza 4y ago
      Twitter is not dead, it has cancer. It might die in a month or a couple of years, if left untreated.
- ericmay 4y ago
  I'm curious about this. I've been using Twitter for some time and haven't noticed much in the way of change. What do you mean by "taking on the establishment media"? How is Twitter doing this when it's a platform for content creators and isn't producing original content? Fox News, the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, etc. are all still publishing content as they have been for years. I did notice that Twitter began banning people who the now CEO dislikes, and then letting some previously banned people back on such as the newly under arrest Andrew Tate who is almost certainly a participant in human trafficking.
koonsolo 4y ago
I would say the big difference is that tweets are very short-lived, and blog posts evergreen. Sure you have thousands of followers, but nobody will see your tweet 5 days from now. With blog posts, you might not have thousands of followers, but if you pick your topic well, google no doubt sends you thousands of readers every month, for years to come. Don't underestimate the power of SEO.
slantaclaus 4y ago
Perhaps we read the article differently but I’m pretty sure he said post your original content on your blog then link to it on different platforms probably using some kind of social media distribution platform. The idea being you can’t be locked down to a single platform. Mastodon whatever that is being one of n platforms you can broadcast onto
pupppet 4y ago
People who want the extra eyeballs at any cost are the reason why we’re in this social media mess.
themaninthedark 4y ago
Just to agree and expand, the reason the article is wrong is because a blog and Twitter are very different things. My speculation: Most of the people that are using Twitter aren't post a lot, nor are they posting anything a lot of "quality". Most is low signal, such as agreement. That does not make for an interesting blog. They are posting on Twitter because they have people saying things they like and in turn liking their support. Part of the reason people are having trouble with Mastodon is they do not have as wide a reach, so less fulfillment. Take this blog for example, this one post is about 1/4 interesting information and 3/4 anti Twitter/Musk. I am glad that he made it, always great to share how to build and use tools! I doubt that they will continue the blog though, their second post is them saying they are too lazy to write something quality and Lorem ipsum. Most people want low effort engagement and most people do not consistently generate quality content. That is why Twitter gained and blogs lost.
brightball 4y ago
I don’t post often but I spoke to somebody who has a very active presence on LinkedIn. She said that her content with external links gets significantly less engagement than content that she posts the full text without the link. As if LinkedIn deprioritizes content that links out to…your blog.
pmlnr 4y ago
> I have thousands of followers on Twitter How many of those are human? > just hundreds on Mastodon Whereas those are most probably actual people.
- WesSouza 4y ago
  Lol. > How many of those are human? Many more than the ones that are on Mastodon.
pwinnski 4y ago
100% of those hundreds of mastodon followers will have your posts in their Home timeline, while an unknown but tiny percentage of your twitter followers will have your posts in their timeline. I don't know of any mastodon servers that report view counts, but interaction on mastodon (replies, likes, boosts) is reported to be dramatically higher per follower than interaction on twitter (replies, likes, retweets). Your mileage may vary, but it seems to be pretty consistent.
kibwen 4y ago
> I have thousands of followers on Twitter, just hundreds on Mastodon. My own take on this calculus is that those thousands of followers on Twitter are by definition comprised of the kind of people who voluntarily use Twitter, which is not the audience that I care to select for. I'd rather have ten high-quality followers than ten thousand low-quality ones.
rektide 4y ago
I generally think you're pretty right on. "... we can only transition and hope others follow" is basically the right idea, the right outlook. There is a bit more bias towards audience size as the reason this is hard than I'm comfortable with though. Twitter as a medium is, in my controversial opinion, almost always a better medium than a blog. There's a ton of counter-opinions, but I quite enjoy seeing a thread of toots, that decompose an idea into different segments. Having the tree of comments shooting off the thread adds context & shows which areas are high engagement, contested or loved, and which don't excite as much. Being able to cite specific pieces is better than most blogs permits. The granularity of threads is better than wall of texts, for me, and enables more interesting interactions. It's a richer online medium, and in my view, that's cool. I hope over time we can start to see ActivityPub/Mastadon start to allow blogging like things that also boast more interactive capabilities than traditional blogs. Blog posts that are shareable on standards-based social media protocols, where commenting is also standards-based social media protocols, would be a huge lift, would allow for some of the memetic virality that has allowed the social media Walled Gardens to team with activity. Making things based on standard protocols also allows for a choice of clients. Such that we can tackle the "blogs aren't realtime" challenge (which also talks about for example comments, another handled via our existing protocols!), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34231569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34231569 Understanding some of the genetic makeup of Twitter & social media & trying to recapture some of the capabilities we had is important in transitioning away. I worry that "start a fucking blog", while spirited & heart-in-the-right-place, suggests a lesser path, a path that isn't as ambitious as is mandatory for survival & thriving.

SamBorick 4y ago

which would you rather have, thousands of people who maybe see your tweets, or a few people who actually engage with what you care about? numbers vs community.

djbebs 4y ago
Why do you believe there is more engagement in mastodon than in a platform designed to maximize engagement?
- SamBorick 4y ago
  I don't believe it, its true. I was on twitter for 7 years. Hundreds of followers, thousands of tweets. Maybe 6 actual replies in that time. I've been on mastodon for 5 years now. I have people I'd genuinely call friends. A community. Regular meaningful engagement with actual humans about the stuff we make and share with each other. Twitter isn't designed for engagement between people. its designed to make money by getting you to engage with twitter as a platform.
- kevq 4y ago
  I think you misspelled “profit” there. Engagement isn't the driver for the algorithm, profit is. It’s all about showing “fresh” content on every refresh so they have your eyes longer, and therefore more ad revenue. Masto is chronological, so there’s WAY more chance of natural discovery of content. It’s not buried by the algorithm because it doesn’t align with the hot take of the day, or isn't “trending”. I’ve personally found Mastodon to be far more engaging than Twitter, but that’s probably not going to be the se for everyone.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Twitter is optimized for engagement with twitter, specifically with advertisers on twitter. The site doesn't prioritize your tweets, it prioritizes those likely to drive further engagement (with the site, remember, not with you). Many people with very large followings on twitter have reported that with even 10% or less as many followers on mastodon, they're seeing more engagement in terms of replies and like and boosts than they see on twitter for the same content.
stiltzkin 4y ago
See and engage.

bm3719 4y ago

We have to break out of this view count trap if we want to be free of the ills of centralized social media. Maybe instead of views, consider the effect of your words on the outside world. How often does a tweet change your thinking or deeply enlighten you? The rare times something like this sorta happens is in the awkward form of a tweet thread, where it would've been much better as a proper article. Speaking personally, there's blog articles that have vastly changed my view of some part of reality and improved my life.

waboremo 4y ago
The view count trap is going to exist and be effective as long as humans feel the need for validation. Let's pretend you have a blog, you're writing on it for years. It's affecting people positively. But nobody ever says a thing about it directly to you, you have no analytics running in the background, no like button. Eventually, you're probably going to stop writing on the blog, feeling it's a waste of time. We can point to popular bloggers all we want, but the fact remains most of them either have some form of view count operating (or likes/claps/whatever gimmick to replicate that "I see you" validation), had rare real life validation based on their blogs (being hired at xyz place because someone said they were a fan... but usually these blogs tend to go abandoned after they get hired), or relied on social networks to encourage them to continue writing their blogs. Until this is solved in a healthier way, we're not really going to be free of view counts.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Validation doesn't necessarily mean view count though - consider citations/WebMention or whatever - a thoughtful post referencing, disputing, discussing your own is surely worth some quite large number of views, in terms of validation.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    Being referenced by someone you look up to is more valuable than a view. But is it really different, when we consider that one view is the reason why that person is referencing your content in the first place? This is why I have a hard time with how many people push against view counts as the ultimate bad. They are just another metric, one we use for validation, but still just a metric. Sure, you might think it's healthier to care about more WebMentions, but what are those when you peel away the layers of branding? I suppose we can't really escape our desperate need to be seen, even in digital space.

Vinnl 4y ago

The author built most of their following on Mastodon (they are one of the folks running one of the larger instances, Fosstodon), and has 22k+ followers there. (And presumably, that audience got it posted here.) Although their goal, given their post history, is not to get lots of people to read their blog - but to start writing, and to potentially have the right people read your blog. (And vice versa, to get the right blogs for them to actuallt get written.)

luxuryballs 4y ago

Plus Twitter is just starting to break out and become interesting, taking on the establishment media, if genuine, is a very healthy idea on Musk's part.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
My Twitter feed is almost entirely dead. There's one person I follow who doesn't want to put in the effort to spin up their own Mastodon server but doesn't want to join anyone else's, and one who worries about censorship by Mastodon moderators (even though it's Musk banning all the journalists), and that's it. I shut Twitter notifications off on my phone because all I still get at group chat spam about fake crypto giveaways and ads for Twitter Blue which I'm pretty sure violates Apple's app store terms. Even the influencer types I follow see higher engagement on Mastodon even if the numbers look smaller, and have thrown in the towel. Twitter's dead and buried.
- tester457 4y ago
  > Twitter's dead and buried. I think it's actually that your side of the internet and the people you follow are in the tech niche, i.e. people who are conscious about this stuff are the ones who are leaving. But the bulk of users, the people who don't care about technology, the millions of teenagers and memers are all going to stay on twitter.
  - WesSouza 4y ago
    Twitter is not dead, it has cancer. It might die in a month or a couple of years, if left untreated.
ericmay 4y ago
I'm curious about this. I've been using Twitter for some time and haven't noticed much in the way of change. What do you mean by "taking on the establishment media"? How is Twitter doing this when it's a platform for content creators and isn't producing original content? Fox News, the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, etc. are all still publishing content as they have been for years. I did notice that Twitter began banning people who the now CEO dislikes, and then letting some previously banned people back on such as the newly under arrest Andrew Tate who is almost certainly a participant in human trafficking.

koonsolo 4y ago

I would say the big difference is that tweets are very short-lived, and blog posts evergreen. Sure you have thousands of followers, but nobody will see your tweet 5 days from now. With blog posts, you might not have thousands of followers, but if you pick your topic well, google no doubt sends you thousands of readers every month, for years to come. Don't underestimate the power of SEO.

slantaclaus 4y ago

Perhaps we read the article differently but I’m pretty sure he said post your original content on your blog then link to it on different platforms probably using some kind of social media distribution platform. The idea being you can’t be locked down to a single platform. Mastodon whatever that is being one of n platforms you can broadcast onto

pupppet 4y ago

People who want the extra eyeballs at any cost are the reason why we’re in this social media mess.

themaninthedark 4y ago

Just to agree and expand, the reason the article is wrong is because a blog and Twitter are very different things. My speculation: Most of the people that are using Twitter aren't post a lot, nor are they posting anything a lot of "quality". Most is low signal, such as agreement. That does not make for an interesting blog. They are posting on Twitter because they have people saying things they like and in turn liking their support. Part of the reason people are having trouble with Mastodon is they do not have as wide a reach, so less fulfillment. Take this blog for example, this one post is about 1/4 interesting information and 3/4 anti Twitter/Musk. I am glad that he made it, always great to share how to build and use tools! I doubt that they will continue the blog though, their second post is them saying they are too lazy to write something quality and Lorem ipsum. Most people want low effort engagement and most people do not consistently generate quality content. That is why Twitter gained and blogs lost.

brightball 4y ago

I don’t post often but I spoke to somebody who has a very active presence on LinkedIn. She said that her content with external links gets significantly less engagement than content that she posts the full text without the link. As if LinkedIn deprioritizes content that links out to…your blog.

pmlnr 4y ago

> I have thousands of followers on Twitter How many of those are human? > just hundreds on Mastodon Whereas those are most probably actual people.

WesSouza 4y ago
Lol. > How many of those are human? Many more than the ones that are on Mastodon.

pwinnski 4y ago

100% of those hundreds of mastodon followers will have your posts in their Home timeline, while an unknown but tiny percentage of your twitter followers will have your posts in their timeline. I don't know of any mastodon servers that report view counts, but interaction on mastodon (replies, likes, boosts) is reported to be dramatically higher per follower than interaction on twitter (replies, likes, retweets). Your mileage may vary, but it seems to be pretty consistent.

kibwen 4y ago

> I have thousands of followers on Twitter, just hundreds on Mastodon. My own take on this calculus is that those thousands of followers on Twitter are by definition comprised of the kind of people who voluntarily use Twitter, which is not the audience that I care to select for. I'd rather have ten high-quality followers than ten thousand low-quality ones.

rektide 4y ago

I generally think you're pretty right on. "... we can only transition and hope others follow" is basically the right idea, the right outlook. There is a bit more bias towards audience size as the reason this is hard than I'm comfortable with though. Twitter as a medium is, in my controversial opinion, almost always a better medium than a blog. There's a ton of counter-opinions, but I quite enjoy seeing a thread of toots, that decompose an idea into different segments. Having the tree of comments shooting off the thread adds context & shows which areas are high engagement, contested or loved, and which don't excite as much. Being able to cite specific pieces is better than most blogs permits. The granularity of threads is better than wall of texts, for me, and enables more interesting interactions. It's a richer online medium, and in my view, that's cool. I hope over time we can start to see ActivityPub/Mastadon start to allow blogging like things that also boast more interactive capabilities than traditional blogs. Blog posts that are shareable on standards-based social media protocols, where commenting is also standards-based social media protocols, would be a huge lift, would allow for some of the memetic virality that has allowed the social media Walled Gardens to team with activity. Making things based on standard protocols also allows for a choice of clients. Such that we can tackle the "blogs aren't realtime" challenge (which also talks about for example comments, another handled via our existing protocols!), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34231569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34231569 Understanding some of the genetic makeup of Twitter & social media & trying to recapture some of the capabilities we had is important in transitioning away. I worry that "start a fucking blog", while spirited & heart-in-the-right-place, suggests a lesser path, a path that isn't as ambitious as is mandatory for survival & thriving.