4 ms·

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.

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.