The thing about tools for posting to Mastodon and Twitter simultaneously is that I sense when a person is just doing that, and it often takes away from the experience of this timeline because a person rarely does that without Mastodon taking an auxiliary role. My home feed is now full of Twitter RTs that have little to no engagement on this platform. I’m just not sure it works that well.
@Navertal true. Maybe if the bridge was a bit more complete...
I don't see a whole lot of engagement on Mastodon anyways tbf (also for other people's toots). Seems like the typical platform kick-off problem. How did Twitter / reddit / etc solve that again??
@srs Acting as a Schelling point for weirdos :D Trick is to scratch an itch that can’t be reached by a person’s existing communities, and I think our appropriately named server is getting its legs there. There’s a difference in tone and content between the feed I have on here and on Twitter and I find myself preferring one over the other for certain things.
@jdp @Navertal Interesting, so you're both saying that the two platforms "mean" different things to you?
That makes sense to me. At the same time, I feel this should ALL go to mastodon in the long run, if only because the tech is obviously better. (decentralization matters)
I wonder if this desire for separate "modes" might be satisfied once we can define complex "sub-communities" or "fora" in masto. E.g. this thread: https://social.coop/@bmann/105646086938187583
@srs @jdp I'd say it's more a function of the size and shape of the community than the platform itself. Twitter’s sheer size makes it more “scene-y” than “community-ish” - more activity driven by social current, lower ratio of response-to-likes (I think) - so certain behaviors make more sense there. Here I scan my feed with more interest in writing responses.
Overlaps of interest with mutuals also affect what I say on which platform - my meditation posts all go to Twitter, for instance.
@srs @jdp Oh, another thought! It's interesting to take Signal's sudden adoption boom as a case study in FLOSS adoption and consider its similarities and differences with a platform like Mastodon.
Signal was elevated by preparation and opportunity - good UI and a stable community of dedicated users meets mass disillusionment with WhatsApp. This is/was the time for Mastodon, but setup isn't as simple and social media platforms have more of a "who's on there?" problem than messaging apps.
@Navertal @jdp oh this *is* interesting! It seems that network effects are different among the two types of apps: for messengers, I can easily use several along each other, but for microblogs - much less so.
Relatedly, existing group chats seem to be the main reason why people stay with WhatsApp - or have always used Signal
@srs @jdp But there are also ways that technical differences affect the platforms. Celebrities/influencers are able to amass more followers on Twitter, I think, than they ever could on here, partly due to the feed algorithms and trend summaries. I like that Mastodon isn't an engagement machine, but it may also cap size/slow growth.
Social infrastructure is weird - it's interesting to think about the different effects of construction and social milieu on the growing popularity of a platform.