I’ve been using fediverse stuff (Mastodon and, most recently, Calckey – I’m just going to use “Mastodon” as shorthand here, purists can bite me) for over a year now, a…
Pretty interesting opinion piece on some of the UX hurdles open source and federated software faces.
I’ve thought about this as I was someone who jumped onto Mastodon as soon as Twitter went dark side. I think the reason it never became a go-to for me like Lemmy has, is the fundamental difference in how I used Reddit and Twitter.
With Reddit, while I curated my feed by following subs, I was really looking for something to cover me when I was idle for a time, and wanted to scroll. I am not too choosy about what I want to see, just surprise me.
Twitter was strictly a service that I used to follow organizations and individuals. I never went to trending or anything like that. My follows were just accounts I gained interest in somewhere else. Mastodon failed because probably less than 10% of the accounts I followed even tried the service. There was nothing to see.
I’ve noticed that issue with Mastodon; there are a number of accounts I followed or interacted with on Twitter only because that was the most readily available means for me to contact some brand via social media. (And without using something like Facebook which I basically don’t use.) I never used Twitter to get the news or find out trends or anything like that. (Heck, I barely even used Twitter, period.) Getting these more “mainstream” organizations and users to adopt Mastodon has been slow, unfortunately.
That said, I’ve ended up using Mastodon much more than I ever used Twitter, even pre-Musk Twitter. I only really used Twitter heavily when I wanted to follow particular topics, which I didusing hashtags. So I basically ended up using Mastodon similarly – not as an “everything” site but as a way to reach different social circles of interest to me, by joining a few different instances and following various hashtags. And there are very vibrant communities there.
I’ve thought about this as I was someone who jumped onto Mastodon as soon as Twitter went dark side. I think the reason it never became a go-to for me like Lemmy has, is the fundamental difference in how I used Reddit and Twitter.
With Reddit, while I curated my feed by following subs, I was really looking for something to cover me when I was idle for a time, and wanted to scroll. I am not too choosy about what I want to see, just surprise me.
Twitter was strictly a service that I used to follow organizations and individuals. I never went to trending or anything like that. My follows were just accounts I gained interest in somewhere else. Mastodon failed because probably less than 10% of the accounts I followed even tried the service. There was nothing to see.
I’ve noticed that issue with Mastodon; there are a number of accounts I followed or interacted with on Twitter only because that was the most readily available means for me to contact some brand via social media. (And without using something like Facebook which I basically don’t use.) I never used Twitter to get the news or find out trends or anything like that. (Heck, I barely even used Twitter, period.) Getting these more “mainstream” organizations and users to adopt Mastodon has been slow, unfortunately.
That said, I’ve ended up using Mastodon much more than I ever used Twitter, even pre-Musk Twitter. I only really used Twitter heavily when I wanted to follow particular topics, which I didusing hashtags. So I basically ended up using Mastodon similarly – not as an “everything” site but as a way to reach different social circles of interest to me, by joining a few different instances and following various hashtags. And there are very vibrant communities there.