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Twitter lacks many features to be a true Mastodon replacement (2022)
- bebopcowboy 4y ago[dead]
- Ecstatify 4y agohttps://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics 2023-04-15: Active Users 1199771 2023-03-15: Active Users 1247487
- LesZedCB 4y agooh my god a product isn't growing, it must be garbage
- Etesam 4y agouser growth is almost imperative for social media products. No one wants to be on a dead social media.
- rapnie 4y agoStrangely enough there's in those few millions there's enough people to have interesting conversations with. ~12 million is larger than population of quite a few countries, where people still manage to have social lives somehow. With just a relatively small amount of followers you'll have engaging conversations on Mastodon/Fediverse. While on Twitter/Birdsite the engagement, unless you are an influencer, is surprisingly low and responses are very low-quality in my experience. But YMMV of course.
- fhrow4484 4y agoWhere did you get the 12 million number from?
- rapnie 4y agoYou are right. I was off by few million, according to below stats counter. Note that any count is an estimation due to the decentralized nature of the network and instances not counted. I've seen other higher numbers too. https://mastodont.cat/@fediverse/110191027067688818 https://mastodont.cat/@fediverse/110191027067688818 servers: 21,583 (-17, max: 21,600) users: 8,990,211 (-69,061, max: 9,059,272) MAU: 1,469,800 (-8,596, max: 2,444,236)
- rvz 4y agoI think you are 10 million off, since the monthly active users shows who is actively using the platform on a monthly basis, not total registrations. If I was to bring up Twitter's total registered users to date, it would be close to the billions. That doesn't mean there are billions of users using it monthly, this is why total registered users as a metric is irrelevant. Twitter's DAUs are in the hundreds of millions (over 220M+). Since that is the case it is clear that the MAUs are even higher. Mastodon's 7 years of existence vs Twitter's 7 years of existence is not even close and is no contest, with Twitter at 90M+ daily active users at the time.
- rapnie 4y agoThe growth-hacking folks around here should realize that from the perspective of the Fediverse there is no such "contest". This is probably the biggest difference why Twitter is by no means an alternative to Mastodon. There's no need to grow at all costs, move fast and break things, do crazy things to get engagement levels up, no commercial incentives, valuations, VC and shareholders to satisfy. The Fediverse is a network created by people, for people, and it is noticeable in the culture.. if you stop the frantic growth-hacking and take the time to discover it.
- Barrin92 4y agofor a product with angry VCs breathing down your neck, yes. For a protocol/ecosystem run without profit motive? Not really. IRC has existed for how many decades now? And of course those stats are misleadingly timed given that it's up about 3x compared to a year ago.
- oytis 4y agoFrom the user's point of view really. Why would I spend time on a social network where few of the people I know or interested in are present?
- Barrin92 4y agofor the same reason you're talking to me here on HN right now. Because a personal community of a 1000 people you vibe with is better than an entropy machine of 100 million. Can you even call something a social network if it makes the people on it anti-social?
- Hamuko 4y agoIs Hacker News a "personal community"? As far as I know, there's hundreds of thousands of daily visitors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581
- johnchristopher 4y agohttps://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ Summary: In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896991 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24897453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24897453 > Dang comment about the 1% rule from 7 months ago: > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622983 > > The number of accounts that have posted to HN this year, divided by the number of IP addresses that have accessed HN, is 0.008. How close that is to the '1% rule' ratio depends on which is the bigger factor: users with more than one IP or IPs with more than one user. We don't know. If the former is bigger, then 0.008 is a lower bound. > > Here's another way. The number of accounts that have posted this year, divided by the number of accounts that have viewed HN while logged in, is 0.36. That doesn't tell us much, but we can estimate the ratio of logged-in users to total users this way: logged-in page views divided by total page views. That ratio is 0.23. We can multiply those two to estimate the ratio of posters to total: > > So the two ways of estimating produce 0.8% and 8% respectively. Both ways are bogus in that they assume things we don't know and mix units that aren't the same, but they're the two I came up with and I don't remember how I did it before. It's interesting that they're almost exactly an order of magnitude apart. That makes it tempting to say the number is probably in between, but that's another cognitive bias talking.
- eqvinox 4y agoMastodon is social media, but it is not a product. While indeed no one wants to be on dead social media, Mastodon is perfectly fine at a "stable condition". If your friends are on it, why would you leave?
- gcthomas 4y agoFediverse isn't VC funded and isn't a 'product' in the sense that Twitter is. Obsession with eternal growth is a function of the funding model. Those putting money or time into this are not looking for a financial return - they are trying to sustain a public service.
- bowsamic 4y agoI agree
- FredPret 4y agoTwitter has one killer feature: lots of users. Everything else is just detail.
- rapnie 4y agoDepends what your purpose is. If you want to be a broadcaster, have a message to sell, then there's a larger audience. If you want to have good conversations, you don't need many people. Who talks to millions of people in a lively back and forth?
- suddenclarity 4y agoYou want the right people such as experts and industry leaders. Those are on Twitter. If you want to hang with average Joes then you have a random Discord service, forums or anonymous people on Reddit. It's not the features that makes microblogs great.
- rapnie 4y ago> It's not the features that makes microblogs great. Agreed. It is organic interaction, which you get at the Fediverse. Much more so than on Twitter is my anecdotal observation. On Twitter you have to hone your messages in hope the algorithms make you 'go viral'. There are quite a few experts, academics, scientists and journalists migrating to the Fediverse. Increasingly some of the industry leaders too. I do not know if that is good for the dynamics. It is quite refreshing to have a social network where people don't try to become influencers.
- illiarian 4y ago> It is organic interaction, which you get at the Fediverse. Much more so than on Twitter Do you though? If you're unlucky with your instance of choice, there will be as much "organic interaction" as in an abandoned mining town. Coupled with aversion to search this makes Mastodon "organic" only on large instances and/or only if you specifically know which people on which instances to follow.
- neevans 4y agoThere is a reason why WhatsApp is still being used widely when there are better alternatives it's because people don't switch apps collectively at once.
- albertgoeswoof 4y agoTell that to myspace
- hennell 4y agoTwitter does have a bookmarks feature. It's called bookmarks...
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoI mean it's almost average satire, but really nobody cares about Mastodon in the mainstream and never will. It's a worse version of twitter, like all of the tools such people use, woke people just started using it to virtue signal against Elon Musk. It's just this weird fringe platform, used by a load of outsiders, hackers and developers, but in terms
- gordian-mind 4y agoThat's true: unless you're on a very specialized instance, what you see on Mastodon is in large part r/worldnews outrage engagement content.
- leobg 4y ago“Mastodon” as a product name, to me, doesn’t sound inviting at all. Evokes associations with masturbate, Mammoth and the general sense of something big, dark and clunky. If you have used the product and like it, I’m sure you won’t care about the name, or even come to like and cherish it. But for an outsider who just hears about this thing I would argue that it’s not very approachable.
- timbit42 4y agoApparently my mind isn't in the gutter like yours, but after using it, it's vastly better than Twitter ever was, and I left more than a year ago so I can't speak to what Twitter is now, but I hear it's going downhill.
- leobg 4y agoI shared a personal perspective, while allowing that people using and likening the service might see things differently. Your response is that you disagree and therefore your mind is better than mine. Quite strong a judgement about another person based on a sample size of two sentences.
- pxmpxm 4y agoOpen source people a notoriously terrible at naming thing, Mastodon is a prime example of that. Too many syllables, too much negative phonetic connotation and any focus group would tell you there's about 3 people that know what a Mastodon was. Should've gone with Mamood or some such romanticized version of an elephant thingy.
- albertgoeswoof 4y agoHaving switched to my own Mastodon host (https://social.mailpace.com/@paul https://social.mailpace.com/@paul), there are two huge differences: 1. I (almost) only see content and topics from people I follow. Which means everything is specific to the interests of the people I choose to follow, and that list needs to be curated well 2. There are no ads, anywhere. Nothing. It’s so strange to experience this and so refreshing It’s definitely a little quieter than Twitter, which is also quite nice. You can read your feed once or twice a day and be caught up.
- K5EiS 4y agoI don't see how that is any different than Twitter to be honest. I only see posts from people I follow and I see no ads even without Twitter Blue.
- albertgoeswoof 4y agoOn Ads, perhaps you have an adblocker on your desktop, but on mobile you’ll end up forced to use an app, and given twitter’s api is now pretty much closed off, there will be ads in those clients/apps. Elon needs to make money, and you will eventually see ads or give him money if you use his platform
- K5EiS 4y agoI was about to specify I use Ublock, however I don't get any ads on mobile either. Scrolling down maybe 10 pages worth and not a single ad.
- zhte415 4y agoBefore Elon, Twitter needed to make money too; it had long distanced itself from its pre-2010ish self in mission and leadership, though that statement suggests at least some independence over the drift of the population during that time.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoDon’t the people hosting these instances need to make money as well?
- lcnmrn 4y agoBoth Mastodon and Twitter have over complicated UIs to be true Subreply replacements.
- mkarliner 4y agoMost of these comments show a different profound sense of humor failure.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DarthNebo 4y agoWhatsApp took half a decade to get dark theme, voting implemented. And they still don't have pinning messages possible. Or fast switching between chats....
- satvikpendem 4y agoI created a Mastodon account, in some server that I can't remember now. I tried to follow people but couldn't figure out how to follow them if they were in different servers (back when the Twitter exodus happened, the main Mastodon server stopped new account creation). I gave up after a few more days of trying and went back to Twitter.
- prmoustache 4y ago[flagged]
- yesplorer 4y agoPeople don’t have to be dumb to not understand complex UX.
- prmoustache 4y agoHitting a "follow" button is not complex UX.
- msm_ 4y agoWhy the unnecessary aggression (with "dumb" and "retards")? People use twitter for fun, maybe they don't want to struggle with complex UX when they have a perfectly valid alternative (Twitter) already. Instead this should make you wonder - if smart and technical people (like NH visitors) have problems with Mastodon UI, what chance do "normal" non-technical people have? Toxic attitudes like yours are a problem in many tech-heavy communities. Unless you want a walled-garden experience for hardcode tech people only. That's fine too. That's how IRC is nowadays and it's OK. Just be honest about this and don't call people outside of that bubble "retards".
- prmoustache 4y agoWhat makes you think that all hn visitors are "smart and technical". And what makes you think that mastodon is walled by hardcore tech people only ot is a tech heavy community? My experience with mastodon is that it is used as much by non technical people as well. Your comparison with irc is not valid [1] [1] although I would say irc used to be used by a lot of non technical people in the late 90's and early 2000's initially via web portals but many switching seamlessly to desktop clients such as mirc. While icq and then messenger were used for private communications with people already knowing each others well, IRC was the goto chat solution for people looking to meet other people with matching interest. Also acted as tinder before it was a thing.
- pearjuice 4y agoMastodon is a wasteland. It can't compete with the engagement and exposure you can get on Twitter. For a social network, any feature parity is irrelevant if it can't reach critical mass.
- guerrilla 4y agofor you. Works fine for me and millions others.
- suddenclarity 4y ago> Works fine for me and millions others. There are fewer than 1.5 million monthly active users on Mastodon according to their stats.
- guerrilla 4y agoAnd this somehow means to you that it doesn't work for them? That's not a correct interpretation.
- suddenclarity 4y agoNo. I'm saying the claim of "millions" might not be correct.
- guerrilla 4y agoIt might or might not, other counters show 11 million accounts, who knows how many active. Which metrics do each counter use and why do we believe they're representative of what we care about?
- timbit42 4y agoWith 1/100th the users, many Mastodon users report much more and valuable engagement on Mastodon than Twitter.
- HopenHeyHi 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DoItToMe81 4y ago[dead]
- timbit42 4y ago> Twitter has this even more advanced feature called self de-federation. You activate it by simply scrolling away, closing the browser tab, taking a break, or even... going outside.. It seems the majority of Mastodon users have already utilized this feature of Twitter. Some have even shut down their Twitter accounts.
- HopenHeyHi 4y agoWonderful. So what is the problem? All's well that ends well.
- DeathArrow 4y agoThe amount of users who care about Mastodon is negligible when compared with the amount of Twitter users. People have already voted and Mastodon got the thumbs down.
- yadingus 4y agoThe amount of users who care about Hackernews is negligible when compared with the amount of Reddit users. People have already voted and Hackernews got the thumbs down.
- rcarmo 4y agoAs someone who almost entirely moved over, I’d say you are right on average and wrong in practice - most of the tech people I follow are more active on Mastodon, and right now there is only a handful of people I actively go back to Twitter to read.
- mariusor 4y agoI doubt that the vast majority of Twitter users made an active decision of giving Mastodon the thumb down. They just didn't hear of it, or had no impetus to find a different option. I think that's an important distinction.
- corbulo 4y agoThe format of the fediverse is anti-virality and anti-discovery. It's also anti-index. It's a joke that anyone thinks it could ever compete with Twitter. It's not for a lack of interest or advertising.
- mariusor 4y ago> It's also anti-index. That's maybe the sentiment of the users, but the implementation details allow indexing of public content very easily. Anyway, the purpose - at least in my eyes - is not to compete with twitter as a whole, but to offer alternatives to people that desire it. And to this end, I think Mastodon, and I hope the rest of the fediverse proved quite successful.
- apexalpha 4y agoSuch a smug blog posting from a social media network with 56 users or so...
- robjan 4y agoIt's satire
- coffeeisyummy 4y agoDid you know that the Macintosh Performa 6400 was the PC to have in 1997 if you wanted the best combination of performance and high quality software? That's what this blog post reminds me of. I loved my Macs in the 1990s, but I knew I wasn't going to have access to a fraction of the software available to Windows machines at the time. Access to a wide-range of software was the killer feature of PCs, back then. And in the case of social media, access to as many eyeballs as possible, reach, is the killer feature. Everything else is just features that add to or subtract from accessing that reach.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoExcept you know…the actual amount of users that make the social media platform worth using… We get it, you hate Musk and Big Tech. Nobody outside the tech world wants to “spin up” a protocol instance, and not enough resources would host all those people for free.
- ajdude 4y agoSomeone in a friend group I'm in was complaining that the mastodon instance they are part of was shutting down because the admins just didn't feel like running it any further. He was distressed because we won't be able to easily export all of his posts. Meanwhile, I'm just disenfranchised because it's the third instance this year to have that same fate. If I ever create a mastodon it'll just be me, on my own VM.
- mmcnl 4y ago> There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content. I honestly have no idea what this says. Why would I care about "instances"? Why would I care about de-federating? I don't even know what these words mean.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoDe-federating means you isolate your private hugbox from even more people.