4 ms·

It seems like fan out social media will just be in a cycle of consolidation and then a shock event eventually breaks it up a bit. Given that Twitter/X seems to

by gfodor 3y ago

It seems like fan out social media will just be in a cycle of consolidation and then a shock event eventually breaks it up a bit. Given that Twitter/X seems to have survived this shock, most likely to me in 5 years or so the next reconsolidation will be people migrating back there to access the network in the usual kinds of feedback loop. There was a window where this wasn’t assured (bluesky had a pretty clear opportunity to disrupt here imo) but that phase seems over and the next cycle seems pretty locked in.

riffic 3y ago
I've been around long enough to see X's trajectory. It's headed here (List of defunct social networking services, Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_networking_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network... side note but Fowler's organization runs an employee Mastodon instance. This is the "correct" model that should have been applied to social networking from the beginning (interoperability, not silos) https://toot.thoughtworks.com/@mfowler https://toot.thoughtworks.com/@mfowler
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  Did any of these ever have 300 million users?
  - riffic 3y ago
    without doing any further research I assume AOL Instant Messenger got pretty close. Windows Live Messenger, on the list, had 330 million active monthly users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Messenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Messenger India TV claims Orkut was exactly that popular (300 m) https://www.indiatvnews.com/technology/news-orkut-farewell-mail-goes-viral-people-remembers-on-twitter-see-how-they-reacted-631992 https://www.indiatvnews.com/technology/news-orkut-farewell-m...
    - scythe 3y ago
      Orkut didn't really die a natural death, though. It was cannibalized to juice Google+, which subsequently collapsed. "X" is definitely running right into a similar problem that Google+ faced: a good name can't save you but an awful name can sink you. I've never heard even the most ardent Musk fans defending the name change. It's ridiculous.
  - abid786 3y ago
    Google+ had 540 million active users
    - drcongo 3y ago
      Active is very debatable there, I think Google counted anyone who was signed into Google.
      - omoikane 3y ago
        Google+ had a lot of active users, which is especially observable if you join the right communities. The demise of Google+ marked the loss of those communities, which I still sorely miss to this day. Those communities, plus stable infrastructure, great integration with photos, publicly viewable profiles without requiring sign-in, transparent moderation that I never knew I missed until I joined Diaspora, and no ads. It was a real shame.
        cma 3y ago
        They removed google chat and replaced it with Hangouts locked behind Google+. A majority of users might have been just using that.
    - dustedcodes 3y ago
      "active"
  - esalman 3y ago
    Per Elon Musk, those are mostly bots.
  - evilduck 3y ago
    Did Twitter? Even Musk was trying to argue it was all bots before he got stuck with the bill.
- gfodor 3y ago
  Mastodon can't scale and centralizes too much power into the largest home nodes, Bluesky is a much better, more 'correct' approach as you put it. But ultimately it doesn't matter, I don't think your first point is correct - the window of opportunity for this cycle is behind us for a decentralization of social media imo. The network effects of X are too strong, eventually people will come back.
  - mariusor 3y ago
    You're viewing the Mastodon vs. Bluesky problem from very different temporal points of observation, so your conclusions are not really meaningful. Mastodon is installed on hundreds of servers, how many instances of Bluesky are there? Until it's adopted more widely it can't be "more correct".
esalman 3y ago
I think the amount of money that was bankrolled into Twitter is sustaining the impression of survival. For me the most useful part of Twitter was real time news trends. I don't even open that tab anymore. Next most useful thing was the network of scientists from my field. It is also non existent now. I saved a lot of tweets about new papers over the years. When I went back to read them during literature review for my dissertation, I found most of them gone and accounts deleted. What has increased drastically is verified accounts spewing either sensationalism without any care for engagement, or outright misinformation, sometimes taken down hilariously by community notes.
- gfodor 3y ago
  Right so what I'm suggesting is the current situation is not a stable state. If I'm right, what you should expect is that those people will, slowly, return to posting their content on X. If I'm wrong, you should expect more and more people migrating off of X and less and less active users on there. The reason I think I am right is because the size and connectivity of the X social graph.
lucideer 3y ago
> There was a window where this wasn’t assured You're living in a fantasy bubble if you think anything in this comment is insightful or representative of the current state of Twitter. The only thing that was in doubt during the various recent Twitter changes was how rapidly it would decline - people have underestimated network inertia, which is why Mastodon and now Bsky have failed to capture sufficient impressions to convince everyone they're the "next Twitter". Which ultimately brings people back to Twitter - noone is going to Twitter because Mastodon/Bsky don't work, they're coming back because with each migration they overestimate the finality & are disappointed. Ultimately though, slow as Twitter's decline is, it is continuing to decline steadily & will inevitably cross the critical threshold where one can consider it first irrelevant (Facebook's currenly approaching this state, a process which has been slow), then eventually "defunct". TL;DR: declines always take longer than everyone predicts, but ultimately still happen. Comebacks generally speaking don't.
- cma 3y ago
  Mastodon has no algorithm, if one guy posts 30 things you get them sequentially so it is dominated by who types the most until they eventually annoy you enough to unfollow them. No algorithm also means you don't filter out their meal photos etc. based on clicking not interested. Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. They have stop letting you adjust aspects of your feed.
  - mjr00 3y ago
    > Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. I have literally never seen this stuff in my feed. Are you commenting on or reposting far right content or street fights? Even if you're commenting or reposting to say how awful the content is, that still counts as "engagement" and will cause the algorithm to give you more of it.
    - raincole 3y ago

by gfodor 3y ago

riffic 3y ago

I've been around long enough to see X's trajectory. It's headed here (List of defunct social networking services, Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_networking_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_social_network... side note but Fowler's organization runs an employee Mastodon instance. This is the "correct" model that should have been applied to social networking from the beginning (interoperability, not silos) https://toot.thoughtworks.com/@mfowler https://toot.thoughtworks.com/@mfowler

amadeuspagel 3y ago
Did any of these ever have 300 million users?
- riffic 3y ago
  without doing any further research I assume AOL Instant Messenger got pretty close. Windows Live Messenger, on the list, had 330 million active monthly users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Messenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Messenger India TV claims Orkut was exactly that popular (300 m) https://www.indiatvnews.com/technology/news-orkut-farewell-mail-goes-viral-people-remembers-on-twitter-see-how-they-reacted-631992 https://www.indiatvnews.com/technology/news-orkut-farewell-m...
  - scythe 3y ago
    Orkut didn't really die a natural death, though. It was cannibalized to juice Google+, which subsequently collapsed. "X" is definitely running right into a similar problem that Google+ faced: a good name can't save you but an awful name can sink you. I've never heard even the most ardent Musk fans defending the name change. It's ridiculous.
- abid786 3y ago
  Google+ had 540 million active users
  - drcongo 3y ago
    Active is very debatable there, I think Google counted anyone who was signed into Google.
    - omoikane 3y ago
      Google+ had a lot of active users, which is especially observable if you join the right communities. The demise of Google+ marked the loss of those communities, which I still sorely miss to this day. Those communities, plus stable infrastructure, great integration with photos, publicly viewable profiles without requiring sign-in, transparent moderation that I never knew I missed until I joined Diaspora, and no ads. It was a real shame.
      - cma 3y ago
        They removed google chat and replaced it with Hangouts locked behind Google+. A majority of users might have been just using that.
  - dustedcodes 3y ago
    "active"
- esalman 3y ago
  Per Elon Musk, those are mostly bots.
- evilduck 3y ago
  Did Twitter? Even Musk was trying to argue it was all bots before he got stuck with the bill.
gfodor 3y ago
Mastodon can't scale and centralizes too much power into the largest home nodes, Bluesky is a much better, more 'correct' approach as you put it. But ultimately it doesn't matter, I don't think your first point is correct - the window of opportunity for this cycle is behind us for a decentralization of social media imo. The network effects of X are too strong, eventually people will come back.
- mariusor 3y ago
  You're viewing the Mastodon vs. Bluesky problem from very different temporal points of observation, so your conclusions are not really meaningful. Mastodon is installed on hundreds of servers, how many instances of Bluesky are there? Until it's adopted more widely it can't be "more correct".

esalman 3y ago

I think the amount of money that was bankrolled into Twitter is sustaining the impression of survival. For me the most useful part of Twitter was real time news trends. I don't even open that tab anymore. Next most useful thing was the network of scientists from my field. It is also non existent now. I saved a lot of tweets about new papers over the years. When I went back to read them during literature review for my dissertation, I found most of them gone and accounts deleted. What has increased drastically is verified accounts spewing either sensationalism without any care for engagement, or outright misinformation, sometimes taken down hilariously by community notes.

gfodor 3y ago
Right so what I'm suggesting is the current situation is not a stable state. If I'm right, what you should expect is that those people will, slowly, return to posting their content on X. If I'm wrong, you should expect more and more people migrating off of X and less and less active users on there. The reason I think I am right is because the size and connectivity of the X social graph.

lucideer 3y ago

> There was a window where this wasn’t assured You're living in a fantasy bubble if you think anything in this comment is insightful or representative of the current state of Twitter. The only thing that was in doubt during the various recent Twitter changes was how rapidly it would decline - people have underestimated network inertia, which is why Mastodon and now Bsky have failed to capture sufficient impressions to convince everyone they're the "next Twitter". Which ultimately brings people back to Twitter - noone is going to Twitter because Mastodon/Bsky don't work, they're coming back because with each migration they overestimate the finality & are disappointed. Ultimately though, slow as Twitter's decline is, it is continuing to decline steadily & will inevitably cross the critical threshold where one can consider it first irrelevant (Facebook's currenly approaching this state, a process which has been slow), then eventually "defunct". TL;DR: declines always take longer than everyone predicts, but ultimately still happen. Comebacks generally speaking don't.

cma 3y ago
Mastodon has no algorithm, if one guy posts 30 things you get them sequentially so it is dominated by who types the most until they eventually annoy you enough to unfollow them. No algorithm also means you don't filter out their meal photos etc. based on clicking not interested. Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. They have stop letting you adjust aspects of your feed.
- mjr00 3y ago
  > Twitter is maybe even worse now though, no matter how many times you click not interested on hard right content, street fights, etc. it just forces it on you. I have literally never seen this stuff in my feed. Are you commenting on or reposting far right content or street fights? Even if you're commenting or reposting to say how awful the content is, that still counts as "engagement" and will cause the algorithm to give you more of it.
  - raincole 3y ago