4 ms·

I've been itching for months for a Twitter alternate, and I'm not placing much hope in the members only waitlist. Whoever is funding them needs to open the wall

I've been itching for months for a Twitter alternate, and I'm not placing much hope in the members only waitlist. Whoever is funding them needs to open the wallets to get them to scale up asap, it's like they can't take advantage of these moments when Twitter falls apart.

GordonS 3y ago
I kind of feel the same - they have a huge opportunity, right now, and they need to take advantage of it, right now. I tried to sign up for a couple of months, without any luck, and then gave up - there's only so much time I want to waste chasing invite codes.
- joeythedolphin 3y ago
  Remember voat
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    I think that failed because it appealed to a comparatively much smaller audience and that audience was likely more engaged with mainstream social media much more through amplifying other “leaders” content than creating their own. In a case like that it’s much more difficult to rapidly acquire the captive audience ready to jump ship to the new platform unless you can get a bunch of the most visible leaders to very quickly do the same before the outrage dies down. In the case of Twitter these changes are impacting a much more diverse population of passive consumers and active content creators, and doing so in a way that these policy changes, if permanent, will induce chronic friction in using the platform, so it may be a better opportunity that prior movements to ditch existing platforms. I’m talking about probabilities though, not predicting that as an outcome. And I think the overall probability, while higher, may still not be too high. But I’m just an interested observer with no particular expertise in the social dynamics of network effects, so take this comment in that context as well.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    The difference with Voat, to my mind, is that it mostly took the outflow of a sub-set of users who were aggrieved by Reddit at the time. This meant that it grew well, but was a more specific niche instead of having a broad base of users. What's happening now with both Reddit and Twitter is effecting almost all of the users equally, which potentially opens up more of generic migration option. I'd never been that interested in Bluesky before, but in the last couple days, 5-10 people I was still sometimes checking in on on Twitter moved over, so now I can't see their posts at all on either platform since I don't have an account on either. It's a real bummer, and it feels like it's also preventing people from really committing to Bluesky, since there's no even read-only access to it, people who still want to have some reach can't use it exclusively.
- jahnu 3y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. With Instagram Threads coming any day now their best chance of success might be gone.
ineedasername 3y ago
Yes this. It clearly seems to have emerged as a result of Twitter’s direction since, near as I can tell, Dorsey only started down that path when it became clear that Elon might not be the savior he’d hoped for. In which case I’d hope bluesky planned for the possibility of a rapid decline driving people to <alternative> and made plans for very rapid scaling and it’s just that implementing them is still non trivial. And/or they didn’t imagine the occurrence (somewhat reasonably) of multiple events on the magnitude of those from the past week driving so much interest this fast. I don’t even use Twitter but the recent news, and awareness of a (hopefully) healthy alternative that I might find worth my time, how driven me and probably other like me to turn to interest. How does one even get into it?
- ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
  Basically if you had a Twitter presence with at least several hundred followers, you probably knew someone who knew someone who had codes.
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    Ah, thanks. I wasn’t sure how they could bootstrap that sort of thing. That’s always a hurdle in a service that fundamentally requires network effects to hit critical mass.
Angostura 3y ago
Have you tried Mastodon? I'm not not claiming it's a direct replacement, but it is similar in many respects
- ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
  It feels empty, like people created accounts then left after a week since there was never the critical mass to support a constant buzz of information. And (this is just my weird very subjective opinion) Mastodon often feels like the unholy child of 2010 Tumblr and Stackoverflow.
  - Angostura 3y ago
    That's odd - I'm sitting looking at the federated timeline and the main problem is the speed at which it is zipping past.
    - ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
      That's a very weird phenomenon that I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's certainly a disorienting user experience.
- ASalazarMX 3y ago
  After having experienced several migrations, I would avoid like the plague any platform that includes a CEO, even if it claims to supports open standards. Mastodon is a better choice long-term.
  - ASalazarMX 3y ago
    TIL Mastodon also has a CEO, but I am not opposed to that. I guess what I don't like is for-profit social networks. https://fortune.com/2022/11/28/mastodon-social-ceo-eugen-rochko-twitter-elon-musk/ https://fortune.com/2022/11/28/mastodon-social-ceo-eugen-roc...

GordonS 3y ago

I kind of feel the same - they have a huge opportunity, right now, and they need to take advantage of it, right now. I tried to sign up for a couple of months, without any luck, and then gave up - there's only so much time I want to waste chasing invite codes.

joeythedolphin 3y ago
Remember voat
- ineedasername 3y ago
  I think that failed because it appealed to a comparatively much smaller audience and that audience was likely more engaged with mainstream social media much more through amplifying other “leaders” content than creating their own. In a case like that it’s much more difficult to rapidly acquire the captive audience ready to jump ship to the new platform unless you can get a bunch of the most visible leaders to very quickly do the same before the outrage dies down. In the case of Twitter these changes are impacting a much more diverse population of passive consumers and active content creators, and doing so in a way that these policy changes, if permanent, will induce chronic friction in using the platform, so it may be a better opportunity that prior movements to ditch existing platforms. I’m talking about probabilities though, not predicting that as an outcome. And I think the overall probability, while higher, may still not be too high. But I’m just an interested observer with no particular expertise in the social dynamics of network effects, so take this comment in that context as well.
- noirbot 3y ago
  The difference with Voat, to my mind, is that it mostly took the outflow of a sub-set of users who were aggrieved by Reddit at the time. This meant that it grew well, but was a more specific niche instead of having a broad base of users. What's happening now with both Reddit and Twitter is effecting almost all of the users equally, which potentially opens up more of generic migration option. I'd never been that interested in Bluesky before, but in the last couple days, 5-10 people I was still sometimes checking in on on Twitter moved over, so now I can't see their posts at all on either platform since I don't have an account on either. It's a real bummer, and it feels like it's also preventing people from really committing to Bluesky, since there's no even read-only access to it, people who still want to have some reach can't use it exclusively.
jahnu 3y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. With Instagram Threads coming any day now their best chance of success might be gone.

ineedasername 3y ago

Yes this. It clearly seems to have emerged as a result of Twitter’s direction since, near as I can tell, Dorsey only started down that path when it became clear that Elon might not be the savior he’d hoped for. In which case I’d hope bluesky planned for the possibility of a rapid decline driving people to <alternative> and made plans for very rapid scaling and it’s just that implementing them is still non trivial. And/or they didn’t imagine the occurrence (somewhat reasonably) of multiple events on the magnitude of those from the past week driving so much interest this fast. I don’t even use Twitter but the recent news, and awareness of a (hopefully) healthy alternative that I might find worth my time, how driven me and probably other like me to turn to interest. How does one even get into it?

ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
Basically if you had a Twitter presence with at least several hundred followers, you probably knew someone who knew someone who had codes.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  Ah, thanks. I wasn’t sure how they could bootstrap that sort of thing. That’s always a hurdle in a service that fundamentally requires network effects to hit critical mass.

Angostura 3y ago

Have you tried Mastodon? I'm not not claiming it's a direct replacement, but it is similar in many respects

ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
It feels empty, like people created accounts then left after a week since there was never the critical mass to support a constant buzz of information. And (this is just my weird very subjective opinion) Mastodon often feels like the unholy child of 2010 Tumblr and Stackoverflow.
- Angostura 3y ago
  That's odd - I'm sitting looking at the federated timeline and the main problem is the speed at which it is zipping past.
  - ZanyProgrammer 3y ago
    That's a very weird phenomenon that I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's certainly a disorienting user experience.
ASalazarMX 3y ago
After having experienced several migrations, I would avoid like the plague any platform that includes a CEO, even if it claims to supports open standards. Mastodon is a better choice long-term.
- ASalazarMX 3y ago
  TIL Mastodon also has a CEO, but I am not opposed to that. I guess what I don't like is for-profit social networks. https://fortune.com/2022/11/28/mastodon-social-ceo-eugen-rochko-twitter-elon-musk/ https://fortune.com/2022/11/28/mastodon-social-ceo-eugen-roc...