Joshua MarshallSo two questions I have about the Mastodon migration. We're about to learn how much highly watched accounts drive Twitter's broader audience. Here's what I mean. I am stunned at how many people I know have already set up Mastodon accounts in the last 48 hrs. Like it seems like almost everyone I know has set one up. Probably I'm not going to notice a lot who haven't yet. I'm mainly reacting to how many I see. But still, it's a huge number.
2/ The people I'm talking about tend to be very high follower accounts - at least in the news/politics space. But on their own they account for a minuscule number of accounts. A few hundred people. Totally meaningless in terms of Twitters scale. So we're about to see whether it just doesn't matter at all, or whether that small number of high profile accounts pulls over a big chunk of audience or whether no one cares and it's just a few hundred people talking to each other. I don't know.
3/ The other issue is journo/news/politics Twitter is just one thing and not terribly large. I'm always fascinated by how many Twitters there are. Virology twitter, History Twitter, Black Twitter, Tech Twitter, Comics Twitter. There are whole ecosystems of Twitter. And I have zero idea whether anything comparable is happening in those ecosystems. I'm curious to find out the answers to both.
4/ Realize I didn't properly explain the three options about a) It's just all the people I know congregating here but that's it. No broader migration. b) migration of high profile accounts spurs mass migration. c) high profile accounts migrate, no one cares and high profile accounts return to Twitter to a chorus of sad trombones.
irwin@joshtpm The key is why the high profile accounts migrate here. If they come to Mastodon because they think they can make more money here, they may be disappointed and go back to Twitter. If they come here because they prefer interacting in this environment, they will stay.
Aram Zucker-Scharff@irwin @joshtpm I mean, I'm sure people will make money here too. It's great for connecting to indie creators and I've already purchased some really cool clothing, books and TTRPGs based on toots I've seen boasted into my timeline. I just suspect the people who succeed at making money here may be different, and hopefully more of them.
@Chronotope @joshtpm But what about brands and advertising...? Without full text search and an explicit mandate against advertising, how do you foresee that playing out (in your expert opinion)?
@irwin @joshtpm the explicit mandate against ads is only instance deep. In the fediverse there are people willing to host far right extremists, I'm sure there are people willing to host Brands. And some people will likely be interested in following them!
Also, I'm sure search will get more expansive, but on Twitter that was never a major vector for ads anyway.
I talked a bit on the bird site why I think ads aren't just inevitable, but need to be considered proactively https://twitter.com/Chronotope/status/1587517273174073345
@Chronotope @joshtpm Do I *have* to go to the bird site? I really have weaned myself off of it.