9 ms·

I don't know if I am an outlier, but even though I love the idea of decentralized social media and dislike a lot about Twitter, my Twitter experience is better

by mg 3y ago

I don't know if I am an outlier, but even though I love the idea of decentralized social media and dislike a lot about Twitter, my Twitter experience is better than my Mastodon experience. I use both as a log of interesting stuff I want to preserve and maybe review in the future. Both work fine for this purpose. But when I see "529 Views, 7 likes, One Reply" on Twitter, it gives me an additional sense of community: https://twitter.com/marekgibney https://twitter.com/marekgibney On Mastodon, I have never seen any reaction whatsoever: https://masto.ai/@mg https://masto.ai/@mg It might be just because my Twitter account is older. I don't know. But somehow I have the feeling it will stay this way.

rvz 3y ago
> I don't know if I am an outlier, but even though I love the idea of decentralized social media and dislike a lot about Twitter, my Twitter experience is better than my Mastodon experience. According to the hundreds of millions of daily active users that still use Twitter / X, You are not an outlier.
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  Because Mastodon's home feed doesn't have an algorithm, it really requires more concerted curation to get a good experience. As I wrote, it can be a bit "disorienting" at first until you find the right people and tags to follow (at least this was my experience).
- timbit42 3y ago
  The correct way to use Mastodon is to follow hashtags, not people, and use lots of hashtags in your posts and comments so other people can find them. When you follow people, you get all their posts, including the ones you aren't interested in. When you follow hashtags, you get all the posts that are relevant to you and none of the posts that are irrelevant to you. If you put hashtags in your posts and comments, you will attract people with similar interests and they will engage with you. Xitter is a lonely place compared to Mastodon w/hashtags.
  - rvz 3y ago
    > The correct way to use Mastodon is to follow hashtags, not people, and use lots of hashtags in your posts and comments so other people can find them. Imagine having to explain how to use a social network ‘correctly’ to attempt to convince users on other social networks to make the move. > Xitter is a lonely place compared to Mastodon w/hashtags. How many daily active users are on Mastodon compared to Twitter / X right now?
ar-nelson 3y ago
I've had the opposite experience. On Mastodon I get a small, but consistent, amount of engagement with my posts, and I have over 400 followers. Twitter was like shouting into the void.
jszymborski 3y ago
Similar to other commenters, I've experienced the opposite: way more interaction on Mastodon than Twitter. Unsure if you're seeking any advice, but in case you are, I notice that you make sparing to no use of hashtags in your post. Because Mastodon doesn't have a timeline algorithm to boost your posts, you really need to rely on hashtags to get your post seen. Think about hashtags more like one uses them on Tumblr rather than Twitter.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Interestingly I always post identical posts to twitter and mastodon and I do not use hashtags, and I still find that plenty of my mastodon posts get more engagement. It’s about 50/50 whether I get more engagement on twitter versus mastodon, and I have 800 followers on mastodon and 2000 on twitter.
  - CharlieDigital 3y ago
    If you have 800 followers, when they favorite or boost your posts, it will show up in the home feeds of users they are connected to, even if they don't follow the tag. I think for folks just starting on Mastodon, the right way is to properly tag the content and broadcast to a community. Then from there, follow interesting people that produce good content within that community.
    - jszymborski 3y ago
      > If you have 800 followers, when they favorite or boost your posts, it will show up in the home feeds of users they are connected to, even if they don't follow the tag. IIRC, boosts will show up in your Home Timeline, follows (and possibly likes?) will result in them showing up in your Public Timeline if they are on a different instance.
themagician 3y ago
Mastodon really serves no purpose. If you want to find a sense of community with real discussion, you join a threaded discussion forum with like-minded individuals. If you want to scream in to the ether and have other people "follow" you, that's what Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok are for. Centralized ether screaming will always be better than decentralized ether screaming because ego reinforcement from counters is a "more is always better" kind of thing.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Where are there still forums?
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Cars, motorcycles, urban development, piloting, semiconductor engineering, etc... all have sizable active forums. Not every niche but in a lot. In those cases Mastodon really is more akin to decentralized shouting into the void then a hotbed of genuinely valuable discussions.
  - themagician 3y ago
    Look up. * music from Inception grows louder *
  - ulrischa 3y ago
    Stackoverflow etc.
    - pasc1878 3y ago
      Stackexchange is definitely NOT a forum. It is not for discussions. If there is a debate then it means the question is not well posed.
- ar-nelson 3y ago
  Disagree. Mastodon isn't so much a Twitter alternative as a Tumblr alternative with Twitter-like UX. And its value proposition is much the same as Tumblr: curate a collection of interesting discussions and memes from across the network, and in the process find people who like the same kinds of things and build connections with them. It's not about "number go up" in the same way Twitter or Instagram is because there's no algorithm to give it a feedback loop. Both Twitter/Instagram and Tumblr/Mastodon are about getting community/attention from strangers by posting what you want and letting them come to you (as opposed to Reddit or forums where you join existing discussions). But the Twitter/Instagram model relies on an algorithm so it only benefits those who are already famous or who invest in gaming the system, whereas Tumblr/Mastodon make it easy for everyone to find their community of a few dozen mutuals without being buried by the algorithm.
popey 3y ago
I get near zero engagement on twitter these days. I can post the identical things on both places, and twitter is just tumbleweed. I have ~17K followers on twitter, and 3K on mastodon. I used to get a fair amount of engagement on twitter, but I don't have a paid blue tick - but I do have one via my employer. That makes no difference.
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
>stuff I want to preserve That seems like sheer folly on a system owned by a tantrum baby.
CharlieDigital 3y ago
I looked at your feed and it's obvious why your interaction is low: you're not tagging your posts. The interaction model on Mastodon is perhaps inverted from X, FB, IG, and so on. On those platforms, it makes sense to follow handles; those platforms are creator focused. On Mastodon, it makes sense to follow tags first ("the community") and then follow interesting people in those communities. Scanning all of your posts, only the most recent one has a tag (#buildinpublic) while the rest are just text. This means that your content won't reach into the home feeds of folks who share common interests. Your June 8 post on Apple's stock value: you might have seen better engagement with simply using the #apple tag. Your Nov 19, 2022 post should be tagged with #css, #html, maybe #webdev. If you don't tag your posts, they won't show up in any home feeds and because the feed is linear in time, they won't have much visibility. Try better usage of tags and see how you do.
- singpolyma3 3y ago
  Hard disagree. Following anything other than people whose content you actually want to see breaks the model completely.
  - CharlieDigital 3y ago
    This is kind of a narrow view isn't it? Do you follow people on Reddit or do you follow communities? I make no claims of whether one model is superior to another; only an observation that on Mastodon, one model will yield better results than the other if what you seek is engagement. Mastodon -- at least for now -- is topic-oriented rather than creator-oriented.
    - r0uv3n 3y ago
      For me the point is that either I curate aggressively by only following people I trust will post interesting stuff or I follow topics on a platform with a solid recommendation algorithm (this doesn't even need to be adapted to my personal usage patterns, it could just be intelligent interaction based sorting of the posts landing in my feed). E.g. I would never use the /new feed across all my subreddits for example, simply because it would show me way too much irrelevant / low quality content. The same is true to some extent when following hashtags on Mastodon.
ulrischa 3y ago
Agree 100
- timbit42 3y ago
  You're using Mastodon incorrectly. If you put hashtags in your posts and comments, you will get lots of interaction because Mastodon users follow hashtags more than people. This is especially important starting out because you won't have many people following you starting out, but if you use and follow hashtags, you are immediately immersed in conversations you are interested in. There are few people who I want to see all of their posts. All I want to see are their posts that are relevant to my interests. So instead of following people, follow hashtags and you will see lots of posts related to what you are interested in and very few posts you aren't interested in. By following hashtags instead of people, the signal to noise ratio is almost 100% signal. I'm following dozens of hashtags and only three people.
timbit42 3y ago
The problem is you are using Mastodon incorrectly. It's not Xitter. On Mastodon, you want to put hashtags in your posts and comments so people who are following those hashtags will see your post and because they are interested in those hashtags, they will interact with you. Your post would have to be really boring or with no hashtags to only get one reply on Mastodon. I follow dozens of hashtags but only three people on Mastodon.

by mg 3y ago

rvz 3y ago

> I don't know if I am an outlier, but even though I love the idea of decentralized social media and dislike a lot about Twitter, my Twitter experience is better than my Mastodon experience. According to the hundreds of millions of daily active users that still use Twitter / X, You are not an outlier.

CharlieDigital 3y ago
Because Mastodon's home feed doesn't have an algorithm, it really requires more concerted curation to get a good experience. As I wrote, it can be a bit "disorienting" at first until you find the right people and tags to follow (at least this was my experience).
timbit42 3y ago
The correct way to use Mastodon is to follow hashtags, not people, and use lots of hashtags in your posts and comments so other people can find them. When you follow people, you get all their posts, including the ones you aren't interested in. When you follow hashtags, you get all the posts that are relevant to you and none of the posts that are irrelevant to you. If you put hashtags in your posts and comments, you will attract people with similar interests and they will engage with you. Xitter is a lonely place compared to Mastodon w/hashtags.
- rvz 3y ago
  > The correct way to use Mastodon is to follow hashtags, not people, and use lots of hashtags in your posts and comments so other people can find them. Imagine having to explain how to use a social network ‘correctly’ to attempt to convince users on other social networks to make the move. > Xitter is a lonely place compared to Mastodon w/hashtags. How many daily active users are on Mastodon compared to Twitter / X right now?

ar-nelson 3y ago

I've had the opposite experience. On Mastodon I get a small, but consistent, amount of engagement with my posts, and I have over 400 followers. Twitter was like shouting into the void.

jszymborski 3y ago

Similar to other commenters, I've experienced the opposite: way more interaction on Mastodon than Twitter. Unsure if you're seeking any advice, but in case you are, I notice that you make sparing to no use of hashtags in your post. Because Mastodon doesn't have a timeline algorithm to boost your posts, you really need to rely on hashtags to get your post seen. Think about hashtags more like one uses them on Tumblr rather than Twitter.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Interestingly I always post identical posts to twitter and mastodon and I do not use hashtags, and I still find that plenty of my mastodon posts get more engagement. It’s about 50/50 whether I get more engagement on twitter versus mastodon, and I have 800 followers on mastodon and 2000 on twitter.
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  If you have 800 followers, when they favorite or boost your posts, it will show up in the home feeds of users they are connected to, even if they don't follow the tag. I think for folks just starting on Mastodon, the right way is to properly tag the content and broadcast to a community. Then from there, follow interesting people that produce good content within that community.
  - jszymborski 3y ago
    > If you have 800 followers, when they favorite or boost your posts, it will show up in the home feeds of users they are connected to, even if they don't follow the tag. IIRC, boosts will show up in your Home Timeline, follows (and possibly likes?) will result in them showing up in your Public Timeline if they are on a different instance.

themagician 3y ago

Mastodon really serves no purpose. If you want to find a sense of community with real discussion, you join a threaded discussion forum with like-minded individuals. If you want to scream in to the ether and have other people "follow" you, that's what Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok are for. Centralized ether screaming will always be better than decentralized ether screaming because ego reinforcement from counters is a "more is always better" kind of thing.

flangola7 3y ago
Where are there still forums?
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Cars, motorcycles, urban development, piloting, semiconductor engineering, etc... all have sizable active forums. Not every niche but in a lot. In those cases Mastodon really is more akin to decentralized shouting into the void then a hotbed of genuinely valuable discussions.
- themagician 3y ago
  Look up. * music from Inception grows louder *
- ulrischa 3y ago
  Stackoverflow etc.
  - pasc1878 3y ago
    Stackexchange is definitely NOT a forum. It is not for discussions. If there is a debate then it means the question is not well posed.
ar-nelson 3y ago
Disagree. Mastodon isn't so much a Twitter alternative as a Tumblr alternative with Twitter-like UX. And its value proposition is much the same as Tumblr: curate a collection of interesting discussions and memes from across the network, and in the process find people who like the same kinds of things and build connections with them. It's not about "number go up" in the same way Twitter or Instagram is because there's no algorithm to give it a feedback loop. Both Twitter/Instagram and Tumblr/Mastodon are about getting community/attention from strangers by posting what you want and letting them come to you (as opposed to Reddit or forums where you join existing discussions). But the Twitter/Instagram model relies on an algorithm so it only benefits those who are already famous or who invest in gaming the system, whereas Tumblr/Mastodon make it easy for everyone to find their community of a few dozen mutuals without being buried by the algorithm.

popey 3y ago

I get near zero engagement on twitter these days. I can post the identical things on both places, and twitter is just tumbleweed. I have ~17K followers on twitter, and 3K on mastodon. I used to get a fair amount of engagement on twitter, but I don't have a paid blue tick - but I do have one via my employer. That makes no difference.

lowbloodsugar 3y ago

>stuff I want to preserve That seems like sheer folly on a system owned by a tantrum baby.

CharlieDigital 3y ago

I looked at your feed and it's obvious why your interaction is low: you're not tagging your posts. The interaction model on Mastodon is perhaps inverted from X, FB, IG, and so on. On those platforms, it makes sense to follow handles; those platforms are creator focused. On Mastodon, it makes sense to follow tags first ("the community") and then follow interesting people in those communities. Scanning all of your posts, only the most recent one has a tag (#buildinpublic) while the rest are just text. This means that your content won't reach into the home feeds of folks who share common interests. Your June 8 post on Apple's stock value: you might have seen better engagement with simply using the #apple tag. Your Nov 19, 2022 post should be tagged with #css, #html, maybe #webdev. If you don't tag your posts, they won't show up in any home feeds and because the feed is linear in time, they won't have much visibility. Try better usage of tags and see how you do.

singpolyma3 3y ago
Hard disagree. Following anything other than people whose content you actually want to see breaks the model completely.
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  This is kind of a narrow view isn't it? Do you follow people on Reddit or do you follow communities? I make no claims of whether one model is superior to another; only an observation that on Mastodon, one model will yield better results than the other if what you seek is engagement. Mastodon -- at least for now -- is topic-oriented rather than creator-oriented.
  - r0uv3n 3y ago
    For me the point is that either I curate aggressively by only following people I trust will post interesting stuff or I follow topics on a platform with a solid recommendation algorithm (this doesn't even need to be adapted to my personal usage patterns, it could just be intelligent interaction based sorting of the posts landing in my feed). E.g. I would never use the /new feed across all my subreddits for example, simply because it would show me way too much irrelevant / low quality content. The same is true to some extent when following hashtags on Mastodon.

ulrischa 3y ago

Agree 100

timbit42 3y ago
You're using Mastodon incorrectly. If you put hashtags in your posts and comments, you will get lots of interaction because Mastodon users follow hashtags more than people. This is especially important starting out because you won't have many people following you starting out, but if you use and follow hashtags, you are immediately immersed in conversations you are interested in. There are few people who I want to see all of their posts. All I want to see are their posts that are relevant to my interests. So instead of following people, follow hashtags and you will see lots of posts related to what you are interested in and very few posts you aren't interested in. By following hashtags instead of people, the signal to noise ratio is almost 100% signal. I'm following dozens of hashtags and only three people.

timbit42 3y ago

The problem is you are using Mastodon incorrectly. It's not Xitter. On Mastodon, you want to put hashtags in your posts and comments so people who are following those hashtags will see your post and because they are interested in those hashtags, they will interact with you. Your post would have to be really boring or with no hashtags to only get one reply on Mastodon. I follow dozens of hashtags but only three people on Mastodon.