4 ms·

There's definitely a community out there for Mastodon, but it isn't the same one as Twitter. Twitter is all about the reach beyond your followers, and that's w

by snvzz 4y ago

There's definitely a community out there for Mastodon, but it isn't the same one as Twitter. Twitter is all about the reach beyond your followers, and that's why most twitter users won't ever consider a switch.

rolenthedeep 4y ago
Due to a lack of "The Algorithm" you actually get much more reach on mastodon with fewer followers. Users who follow you will always get your posts, period. There is no mechanism which will randomly or otherwise restrict the reach of your posts, it's dependent solely on the number of followers. No exaggeration, every user I've seen come from Twitter has remarked on this fact. It's a very frequent topic of conversation across the entire network. The flipside of this coin is that mastodon is bad for Brands. There's no mechanism for forcing your posts into other users' feeds, you need to actually earn followers organically. Which is to say, mastodon takes work and active maintenance to build and keep a sizable following, but your posts reach 100% of your followers. Because those followers are people who made an active decision to follow you, they are vastly more likely to share your posts to their followers. Also, all of this is by design. Mastodon was designed for people to connect with each other. Lack of advertising is a feature that mastodon users generally value very highly. To be successful as a Brand on mastodon, you have to actually be valuable to people on mastodon. It's hard, and you can't just throw money to make the work go away.
- SubiculumCode 4y ago
  This has been my experience as well. The "algorithm" removes power from users...it like having someone between you and your *friends deciding whether what you said is important enough to see.
- CaptainFever 4y ago
  This has been my experience as well when I switched over to Mastodon -- "random posts" such as questions, "off-topic" thoughts from me get more replies from people I know well. However, this also meant that I had to see everyone else's "random posts". It's a trade-off. Personally, I went back to Twitter because the signal-to-noise ratio on Mastodon was too bad, and I use Telegram/Discord instead to communicate with friends privately.
  - seba_dos1 4y ago
    Instead of going back to Twitter, I just took some time to disable boosts from the noisiest people and it already did wonders to S/N.
pwinnski 4y ago
Twitter's ability to provide reach seems to be diminishing rapidly, whether mastodon thrives or not. I don't know that they'll ever cross on an imaginary chart over time; it could be that twitter always delivers reach better than mastodon does, but the gap between them is definitely shrinking. One of the things people keep finding on mastodon is that engagement is vastly higher on mastodon. The same post on both platforms might seem to get thousands more impressions on twitter (reach), but received far more comments and likes and boosts on mastodon (engagement). Some people are truly pursuing reach, and so far if you want to get the attention of a fast-food brand or congressional staffer, twitter is your better bet. Some people are actually more interested in engagement, even when they didn't realize it was an option since there's so little of it outside the top tier on twitter.
TMWNN 4y ago
>Twitter is all about the reach beyond your followers, and that's why most twitter users won't ever consider a switch. Also, the inability to move existing posts or DMs from one instance to another discourages Twitter blue-check types. What if your instance is blocked by others (as this guide briefly mentions)? What if your instance shuts down?[1] What if you change jobs? (I think the last is why we haven't seen CNN or BBC or Yale create an instance and its people start using it.) [1] Such as the recent spectacular implosion of mastodon.lol after its owner got horribly abused by members over Hogwarts Legacy. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195>
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  Part of the culture of mastodon is that most people consider posts to be ephemeral. There's built in (default off) tools that automatically delete posts after X time unless they meet conditions like Y boosts or Z favorites. I was on .lol and switched servers the same day. My daily experience hasn't changed one tiny bit. I'm a little bummed about losing the "good" posts, but reposting them on the new server is a good way to build engagement in a new place anyway. As always, the counter argument to this is that "influencers" should be running their own instance, and not freeloading on someone else's server to run their business. Many, many people run single-user instances on an rpi, and there's services out there that will manage larger servers for you. We're back to the first days of the cloud: It's just someone else's computer. If you want guarantees, you have to use your own computer.

by snvzz 4y ago

rolenthedeep 4y ago

Due to a lack of "The Algorithm" you actually get much more reach on mastodon with fewer followers. Users who follow you will always get your posts, period. There is no mechanism which will randomly or otherwise restrict the reach of your posts, it's dependent solely on the number of followers. No exaggeration, every user I've seen come from Twitter has remarked on this fact. It's a very frequent topic of conversation across the entire network. The flipside of this coin is that mastodon is bad for Brands. There's no mechanism for forcing your posts into other users' feeds, you need to actually earn followers organically. Which is to say, mastodon takes work and active maintenance to build and keep a sizable following, but your posts reach 100% of your followers. Because those followers are people who made an active decision to follow you, they are vastly more likely to share your posts to their followers. Also, all of this is by design. Mastodon was designed for people to connect with each other. Lack of advertising is a feature that mastodon users generally value very highly. To be successful as a Brand on mastodon, you have to actually be valuable to people on mastodon. It's hard, and you can't just throw money to make the work go away.

SubiculumCode 4y ago
This has been my experience as well. The "algorithm" removes power from users...it like having someone between you and your *friends deciding whether what you said is important enough to see.
CaptainFever 4y ago
This has been my experience as well when I switched over to Mastodon -- "random posts" such as questions, "off-topic" thoughts from me get more replies from people I know well. However, this also meant that I had to see everyone else's "random posts". It's a trade-off. Personally, I went back to Twitter because the signal-to-noise ratio on Mastodon was too bad, and I use Telegram/Discord instead to communicate with friends privately.
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  Instead of going back to Twitter, I just took some time to disable boosts from the noisiest people and it already did wonders to S/N.

pwinnski 4y ago

Twitter's ability to provide reach seems to be diminishing rapidly, whether mastodon thrives or not. I don't know that they'll ever cross on an imaginary chart over time; it could be that twitter always delivers reach better than mastodon does, but the gap between them is definitely shrinking. One of the things people keep finding on mastodon is that engagement is vastly higher on mastodon. The same post on both platforms might seem to get thousands more impressions on twitter (reach), but received far more comments and likes and boosts on mastodon (engagement). Some people are truly pursuing reach, and so far if you want to get the attention of a fast-food brand or congressional staffer, twitter is your better bet. Some people are actually more interested in engagement, even when they didn't realize it was an option since there's so little of it outside the top tier on twitter.

TMWNN 4y ago

>Twitter is all about the reach beyond your followers, and that's why most twitter users won't ever consider a switch. Also, the inability to move existing posts or DMs from one instance to another discourages Twitter blue-check types. What if your instance is blocked by others (as this guide briefly mentions)? What if your instance shuts down?[1] What if you change jobs? (I think the last is why we haven't seen CNN or BBC or Yale create an instance and its people start using it.) [1] Such as the recent spectacular implosion of mastodon.lol after its owner got horribly abused by members over Hogwarts Legacy. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195>

rolenthedeep 4y ago
Part of the culture of mastodon is that most people consider posts to be ephemeral. There's built in (default off) tools that automatically delete posts after X time unless they meet conditions like Y boosts or Z favorites. I was on .lol and switched servers the same day. My daily experience hasn't changed one tiny bit. I'm a little bummed about losing the "good" posts, but reposting them on the new server is a good way to build engagement in a new place anyway. As always, the counter argument to this is that "influencers" should be running their own instance, and not freeloading on someone else's server to run their business. Many, many people run single-user instances on an rpi, and there's services out there that will manage larger servers for you. We're back to the first days of the cloud: It's just someone else's computer. If you want guarantees, you have to use your own computer.