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After the recent (ongoing) chaos at Twitter, I got super excited for Mastodon and built an account analytics tool (for businesses, but also individuals) in hope

After the recent (ongoing) chaos at Twitter, I got super excited for Mastodon and built an account analytics tool (for businesses, but also individuals) in hopes of finding similar success to the analytics suite I built for Twitter ten years ago. Turns out, it's still way too quiet over there. At least my bubble seems to have quieted down massively again. A few selected groups seem to have made a home and built out their circles, but from what I can hear, it's mostly crickets in the night. And, the API itself and some of the tech design around it reminds me of the same trouble Twitter went through at the very beginning. One major instance had to kill all their keys a while back (if I remember correctly), so over night, all my users were deauthenticated. The rate limits are quite tough and all designed for one specific use case, and unusable for another, etc. etc. And every single instance could be sticking to the recommended configuration and performance considerations, or not — it really depends on the person who runs it.

re5i5tor 4y ago
Not for me. Better engagement already than I had on Twitter.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Bear in mind if the OP is primarily focused on business accounts, plenty of servers block them pretty aggressively. There are servers that allow businesses and some businesses with a reasonably decent following, but since there's no advertising business there with an incentive to force people to see business accounts, many people choose not to.
  - mittermayr 4y ago
    It's interesting you mention that. I've seen a few businesses sort of try and get a holding there, but then abandon their efforts. I think I saw an official MS Azure account that had 14 followers or something. Businesses aren't really clear either on whether or not they're expected to be there, or even allowed. Good point.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      Generally a core point is that because you can't really push ads in people's faces, business accounts on Mastodon need to push content people choose to follow. Updates on products and services that existing users of said products and services would want to know about... great. Building a direct connection with consumers through interaction... fantastic.
      - re5i5tor 4y ago
        Can't tell you how refreshing this is to experience.
    - madeofpalk 4y ago
      On the other hand, Tailscale is doing pretty well https://hachyderm.io/@tailscale https://hachyderm.io/@tailscale But really, I think one of the things that attracts users to Mastodon is how uncommercial it all is. The current audience explicitly does not want display advertising or a website full of #brands
      - WorldMaker 4y ago
        With the weird exception of the audience for https://brands.town https://brands.town, an instance full of and for #brands. Though the game there is actually culture jamming, satire/farce, and LARPing fake brands for amusement, and not actually a place for real advertising either.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  ironic this comes from a throwaway - I suppose they're really totally all in on mastodon
  - re5i5tor 4y ago
    New account (old one seemed to have expired), not a throwaway. I've never (till now) been an active commenter.
- mittermayr 4y ago
  Are you in a specific niche? Honestly curious how you've gone from signing up there to 'better' engagement than on Twitter.
  - camjohnson26 4y ago
    There’s no algorithm, so just posting content isn’t enough. If you don’t follow people on other servers you won’t see anything in the feed, and reply threads will be empty. It took a while to find the right people to follow but now I get as much out of it as I used to get from Twitter. Hashtags are a lot more important too for discoverability since there’s no search function. My engagement is still low, but on Twitter I would post something and it would just never get seen. Now at least a couple of people will often reply.
  - re5i5tor 4y ago
    In November I got disgusted enough to leave twitter, not just pull the plug, tear it out of the wall. To be clear -- very small twitter account, under 1K followers. I just set up a new Masto account on a larger server, started watching, following, engaging. A small case in point: Rands In Repose blog's accounts on both platforms. 42K followers on Twitter and 7.7K followers on Mastodon. Despite Twitter having 5.45 times as many followers, Michael Lopp reports significantly higher engagement on Mastodon. Just had this conversation with him.
    - mittermayr 4y ago
      Interesting follow up, thanks!
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Same here. The technically inclined portion of the Mac-sphere has largely moved over to Mastodon and stayed, as have a lot of devs and designers. Any time I post something I’ve been working on I get a bunch of new followers and a number of replies, contrasted to Twitter where I got almost nothing.
msravi 4y ago
I see this too. I joined mathstodon - which is a niche for math - and I hardly see any conversations. People are there posting stuff, but there's almost zero engagement, even when well known, popular accounts post. As an example, going back over the last 1 day's posts on the federated timeline, about 7 posts have 1 reply each, and just 1 has more than 1 reply.
- moritonal 4y ago
  That sounds as expected for a platform of it's current size? The 1% rule is well proven and coming into this expecting Twitter level engagement is never going to work. I would be curious at what ratio of viewers there is.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Keep in mind that: 1) Only the user has a full view of engagement at any time, and generally only the user's home instance has anything resembling a "full" view of conversations/replies (and even that is going to not show things private to the user). This is a bit of a natural consequence of the federation model. You may be surprised if you follow posts from popular accounts to their home instances how much additional conversation shows up that your own instance isn't seeing (for all sorts of reasons). This is going to be especially the case in the Federeated timeline because some of the Federated timeline is already "one degree out" from the what the instance is naturally following and it won't pick up the next degree. 2) There is some pushback in parts of the Mastodon community against "popular" accounts from the perspective of other social media and there are a bunch of Mastodon denizens that don't converse with "traditionally popular" accounts such as celebrities/"Influencers" and many even actively mute and block anyone that seems more of a "Brand" than a person or that themselves act like Mastodon is primarily a "write only"/"boost mostly"/"self-advertise" media. In my experience the most active conversations on Mastodon are among people you "wouldn't expect" to be popular or in deep, weird, fun hashtags like #Monsterdon.

re5i5tor 4y ago

Not for me. Better engagement already than I had on Twitter.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
Bear in mind if the OP is primarily focused on business accounts, plenty of servers block them pretty aggressively. There are servers that allow businesses and some businesses with a reasonably decent following, but since there's no advertising business there with an incentive to force people to see business accounts, many people choose not to.
- mittermayr 4y ago
  It's interesting you mention that. I've seen a few businesses sort of try and get a holding there, but then abandon their efforts. I think I saw an official MS Azure account that had 14 followers or something. Businesses aren't really clear either on whether or not they're expected to be there, or even allowed. Good point.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Generally a core point is that because you can't really push ads in people's faces, business accounts on Mastodon need to push content people choose to follow. Updates on products and services that existing users of said products and services would want to know about... great. Building a direct connection with consumers through interaction... fantastic.
    - re5i5tor 4y ago
      Can't tell you how refreshing this is to experience.
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    On the other hand, Tailscale is doing pretty well https://hachyderm.io/@tailscale https://hachyderm.io/@tailscale But really, I think one of the things that attracts users to Mastodon is how uncommercial it all is. The current audience explicitly does not want display advertising or a website full of #brands
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      With the weird exception of the audience for https://brands.town https://brands.town, an instance full of and for #brands. Though the game there is actually culture jamming, satire/farce, and LARPing fake brands for amusement, and not actually a place for real advertising either.
endisneigh 4y ago
ironic this comes from a throwaway - I suppose they're really totally all in on mastodon
- re5i5tor 4y ago
  New account (old one seemed to have expired), not a throwaway. I've never (till now) been an active commenter.
mittermayr 4y ago
Are you in a specific niche? Honestly curious how you've gone from signing up there to 'better' engagement than on Twitter.
- camjohnson26 4y ago
  There’s no algorithm, so just posting content isn’t enough. If you don’t follow people on other servers you won’t see anything in the feed, and reply threads will be empty. It took a while to find the right people to follow but now I get as much out of it as I used to get from Twitter. Hashtags are a lot more important too for discoverability since there’s no search function. My engagement is still low, but on Twitter I would post something and it would just never get seen. Now at least a couple of people will often reply.
- re5i5tor 4y ago
  In November I got disgusted enough to leave twitter, not just pull the plug, tear it out of the wall. To be clear -- very small twitter account, under 1K followers. I just set up a new Masto account on a larger server, started watching, following, engaging. A small case in point: Rands In Repose blog's accounts on both platforms. 42K followers on Twitter and 7.7K followers on Mastodon. Despite Twitter having 5.45 times as many followers, Michael Lopp reports significantly higher engagement on Mastodon. Just had this conversation with him.
  - mittermayr 4y ago
    Interesting follow up, thanks!
kitsunesoba 4y ago
Same here. The technically inclined portion of the Mac-sphere has largely moved over to Mastodon and stayed, as have a lot of devs and designers. Any time I post something I’ve been working on I get a bunch of new followers and a number of replies, contrasted to Twitter where I got almost nothing.

msravi 4y ago

I see this too. I joined mathstodon - which is a niche for math - and I hardly see any conversations. People are there posting stuff, but there's almost zero engagement, even when well known, popular accounts post. As an example, going back over the last 1 day's posts on the federated timeline, about 7 posts have 1 reply each, and just 1 has more than 1 reply.

moritonal 4y ago
That sounds as expected for a platform of it's current size? The 1% rule is well proven and coming into this expecting Twitter level engagement is never going to work. I would be curious at what ratio of viewers there is.
WorldMaker 4y ago
Keep in mind that: 1) Only the user has a full view of engagement at any time, and generally only the user's home instance has anything resembling a "full" view of conversations/replies (and even that is going to not show things private to the user). This is a bit of a natural consequence of the federation model. You may be surprised if you follow posts from popular accounts to their home instances how much additional conversation shows up that your own instance isn't seeing (for all sorts of reasons). This is going to be especially the case in the Federeated timeline because some of the Federated timeline is already "one degree out" from the what the instance is naturally following and it won't pick up the next degree. 2) There is some pushback in parts of the Mastodon community against "popular" accounts from the perspective of other social media and there are a bunch of Mastodon denizens that don't converse with "traditionally popular" accounts such as celebrities/"Influencers" and many even actively mute and block anyone that seems more of a "Brand" than a person or that themselves act like Mastodon is primarily a "write only"/"boost mostly"/"self-advertise" media. In my experience the most active conversations on Mastodon are among people you "wouldn't expect" to be popular or in deep, weird, fun hashtags like #Monsterdon.