I swapped Twitter for Mastodon and couldn't be happier
@rich_taylor shared his positive experience with leaving Twitter and joining WIP, a community of builders.
I did the same.
I mothballed my Twitter profile, joined Mastodon, and couldn't be happier. Within hours of signing up I got more followers, reactions, and interesting conversation than I could ever hope to get in months on Twitter.
After over a dozen years on Twitter as a non-celebrity, I had hit a growth ceiling. My follower count was flat and the algorithms buried my tweets, which very few users saw. And yes, I did everything such as taking part to conversations, posting threads, bringing value, sharing media, whatever.
Mastodon is incredibly refreshing. Its users are adults with long attention spans who don't mind reading what interests them, clicking links to the open web, and discussing. With no algorithms that get in the way.
I couldn't be happier.
Why would you NOT buy my product?
I've got a couple issues with Mastodon. The first is the size of the network.
Partially the reason I'm on Twitter is because I know everyone is on there, and I can find a diversity of opinions (however I will preface this by saying the amount of diverse opinion is declining). I don't have those same expectations with Mastodon. This is just my opinion, but it feels geared towards people who are technical or in the technology space. I've never heard someone who isn't in the technology industry say they are using Mastodon or even that they've heard of it. But everyone I know, techie or not, uses Twitter or has considered using it for the reasons I've mentioned above.
My second issue with them is just the quality of their code. From what I've read, it's poorly built and isn't secure as a result.
My third issue with it is the fact it is decentralized. While I'm an avid supporter of decentralization, it doesn't always make sense and Mastodon's gimmick seems to be that since it's decentralized it's worth checking out. But I'm not going to use Mastodon over Twitter just for the simple fact one is decentralized while the other isn't. As my first point mentioned, I'm on social media to interact with interesting ideas. I don't care about how the back end of the site is operating.
However, I do like the fact that Mastodon is out there trying to take on Twitter. I'm not pleased with how Twitter operates as thought police online, banning anyone they disagree with. There is definitely room for a Twitter challenger to take market share away from them for this reason, but I'm not confident Mastodon is going to be that winner.
TLDR: If everyone who preaches about the benefit of Mastodon actually used it then it'd have 10x the users it has now.
Back to your remark on using or trying Mastodon. After over a dozen years, I realized I have no future on Twitter, I can't grow because the algorithms make me hit a hard wall. This was a major motivation for trying Mastodon.
Absolutely. When it comes to the quantity and diversity of users there's just no game, Twitter crushes Mastodon. The latter is used only by advanced users, not necessarily in tech. I don't care for decentralization either.
Still, despite the tiny platform, I'm getting more activity than on the Twitter mastodon (no pun intended). I think this is because the platforms with no algorithms, such as news and feed aggregators with chronological timelines, give everyone a chance to be seen and are level playing fields.
It’s nice to hear you found what you were looking for.
I had an account on mastadon but I didn’t spend enough time to figure it out.
Thanks, for me it's already better than Twitter.
The problem with Mastadon is that the UX is horrible and the sign up flow is equally as bad. I went to the site and it feels like they do everything possible to make sure you don't sign up lol.
Signing up for the instance I joined,
mastodon.technology, required moderator approval but was otherwise straightforward.I like Mastodon's design better than Twitter's. The lack of ads and algorightms are worth alone Mastodon to me.
Glad I could be some inspiration! 😍 I had a quick look at Mastadon but wasn’t sure it was what I was looking for so didn’t sign up. I’ll have another look and sign up to see what it’s all about. Thanks for sharing!
If discussing passions and sharing knowledge is what you're interested in, Mastodon is the place to go.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
To overcome the issue of picking an instance (server) I signed up to
mastodon.technology, which is about tech and is the closest to my interests. You can follow and interact with users on other instances too, as long as you know their handles.But Mastodon has no algorithmic recommendations or full-text search, so you still need to discover interesting users to follow. A few steps helped me seed and populate my feed.
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.
Mastodon is possibly the last place where marketers hang out online, thankfully. Mastodon and the fediverse are for interests, passions, and values. Not for chasing leads or trading growth hacks.