With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!!
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Maybe telling the people that we have the fediverse with all it's possibilities and that it is more then Mastodon? That it is a real network and not an app? -
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Explain that the Fediverse cannot be bought by some tech bro millionaire. It is ours.
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@taylorlorenz Maybe telling the people that we have the fediverse with all it's possibilities and that it is more then Mastodon? That it is a real network and not an app?
@sven222 You're responding to a Mastodon instance. Stay out of the conversation.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz this is very chicken/egg, but I think it needs a more heterogenous user base. if you’re into programming or leftish politics, there are many users to engage with. if you’re looking for discourse around a major sport like football/soccer, there’s almost nothing here.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
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@taylorlorenz Explain that the Fediverse cannot be bought by some tech bro millionaire. It is ours.
@janikvonrotz @taylorlorenz good point, but most of the users really don't care, they don't care their pictures are free use for big tech, they don't care that Meta AI is learning on pictures of their kids, learning on text statuses, etc. Now #Fediverse is not easy to discover, not easy to find friends, less users and less topics to discuss. I happy to be here and selfhosting my server, but it will need more work to be done to be competitive!
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@sven222 You're responding to a Mastodon instance. Stay out of the conversation.
@aysc This post is sent to the complete Fediverse, shoiuld I write "stay out of the fediverse"? No, I see a great fortune in the fediverse, and that you can convince a lot of people to come here by shownig them the oportunitys. People understand that it is not another app, but a complete real network. It is a possibility to show people that are not loocking for a X replacement, that there is peertube and pixelfeed and friendica. Why do you want to keep your network mastodon only? -
@bitpickup @taylorlorenz "Refuse" implies she has a responsibility to do it, and I'm not seeing that as anyone's responsibility. Setting up an instance takes time, technical skill, and money. Nobody owes any of that to the world. I'm grateful to those who do, and I support them financially because it can, but that's all.
@OrionKidder @bitpickup @taylorlorenz it is definitely NOT going to help if we put the onus on new users to run/moderate their own instances (even if we have turnkey solutions for this).
The people I talk to mostly complain that Mastodon seems "too complicated", and the idea that you are obligated to run your own instance is not going to help that.
Eventually some may recognize its in their interest to do so, but we need to LOWER the perceived barrier to entry, not raise it.
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@anja @taylorlorenz Advertising is the way. I didn't know about it until my brothers found out somehow, but its not like there's many advertisements for Mastodon like there is for Facebook.
@NicksWorld @anja @taylorlorenz reading through this thread and I think we need more things to make it seem cool. Marketing is a good idea. Also, I don’t know how easy it is to build on top of mastodon’s API, my understanding of twitter’s initial rise was openness of the api and the developer ecosystem that created was a big part of adding cool new features.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz I think ultimately it boils down to the crux of human nature; being in groups. On Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc., you'll find that's where most of your family and friends are and so naturally it's very hard to migrate to a newer, "unknown" platform. Do we remember how hard it was to get a parent, or grandparent, on Facebook? History repeats itself like that, except this time, we're the boomers!
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@OrionKidder @bitpickup @taylorlorenz it is definitely NOT going to help if we put the onus on new users to run/moderate their own instances (even if we have turnkey solutions for this).
The people I talk to mostly complain that Mastodon seems "too complicated", and the idea that you are obligated to run your own instance is not going to help that.
Eventually some may recognize its in their interest to do so, but we need to LOWER the perceived barrier to entry, not raise it.
@OrionKidder @bitpickup @taylorlorenz additionally pressuring people to open their own instance from the start will inevitably lead to poorly moderated instances, or people giving up and leaving dead instances, which does not help anyone.
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@hfinyow @taylorlorenz I hear what you're saying. You're not wrong about the "there's no one app" thing. But at the same time:
It's not an app. It's a web site. It works great on a browser. My solution, then, would be to make an "app" that's really just a web app. It leads you to a browser instance of Mastodon. Your app will get "upgraded" when Mastodon is upgraded because it's just a website. That should be the default.
@OrionKidder That's how I use Mastodon on my phone: I made the web page an "app". It's still accessed through Firefox Mobile, but without the obvious address bar and other browser components. It works really well that way too.
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Answering this in the off chance you read replies 🤪
Biggest barrier to courting new users: we are culturally hostile here to influence peddlers and people who are trying to broadcast and don't want to interact. (ie, we treat them like the person invited to the small cocktail party at the house, who jumps up on a table and starts yelling).
Technically, users are used to being force fed content (through viral algorithms and suggested content)... i.e. passive (like TV). Mastodon is not built like that, which means people don't know how to find things they like or people to follow.
Finally (deliberately so), Mastodon is not built to tickle the endorphins... i.e. "likes" "followers" "virality" and that often turns people off, who really would like to use social media like a gambling junkie uses a slot machine (pull the lever, hope for a big payoff!). Fundamentally, non-addictive to that kind of thing.
I don't know if we want to fix any of that, though 🤪
@ai6yr "Biggest barrier to courting new users: we are culturally hostile here to influence peddlers". I'd say that is Mastodon's biggest appeal!
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@hfinyow @taylorlorenz I hear what you're saying. You're not wrong about the "there's no one app" thing. But at the same time:
It's not an app. It's a web site. It works great on a browser. My solution, then, would be to make an "app" that's really just a web app. It leads you to a browser instance of Mastodon. Your app will get "upgraded" when Mastodon is upgraded because it's just a website. That should be the default.
You can do that already.
Progressive web app
https://fedi.tips/how-to-install-web-apps-for-mastodon-and-the-fediverse/
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz
Getting them to stay is the harder part. How many abandoned accounts are there that post a couple of times. Dont get followers, dont connect and never come back.Welcoming people.
Answer their questions
Give them tips
Help them connect to other with similar interests.
Explain how it works
Suggest content or people -
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Just a couple of politicians, influencers and journalists using Mastodon as their primary medium would do wonders. Dutch news routinely refers to posts on X/Twitter.
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@taylorlorenz Also, specifically for TikTok users, we actually do have a federated alternative, not sure if you heard of it, https://joinloops.org?
I wonder if Mastodon's reputation has been too tarnished by all the gatekeeping and scolding. Maybe we could get more people into the fediverse sneakily through another platform?
@stefan
I second that:
a fedi equivalent to TikTok would be Loops, not Mastodon, which sees itself as a microblogging / short text publishing platform, not a short video platform in the first place.
@taylorlorenz -
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz There is also the problem of retaining people. @davidallengreen, a UK lawyer with solid takes on pretty much everything, just went on an extended fedi break because the purity police didn’t like him using substack and he got bored of the hassling. Lovely own goal reply guys, the only behaviour you changed was his posting on the fedi. This is a people issue not a tech issue, which I’m not quite sure how to get around. He’s not the only one either.
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@hfinyow @taylorlorenz I think I'd suggest people to just start on mastodon.social. don't worry about instances to start with, as it's very easy to migrate later. And then once they got the basic hang of it, tell them like "oh, btw as you're really into literature/art/music/tech/... did you see this other instance? I think it'd match really well with your profile. And it'd help the network, too, if you'd chose a smaller, more individual instance!"
Keep it simple to start with, don't overwhelm.@T_X @hfinyow @taylorlorenz yes but, pick another instance to recommended so we can protect the integrity of the fediverse
https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server/
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Onboarding is still the biggest hurdle. Asking new users to pick a server, understand federation, and think about migrating later is a lot. Better defaults and clearer explanations would help without breaking decentralization.
