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.
Martin Kimber@joshtpm I’ve seen enough migrations of people I used to follow on Twitter, just this weekend, that I suspect I will favour staying on mastodon. If c) happens then I will happily delete Twitter as long as there is a critical mass of interesting content here for me. It already feels quite different today from when I created my account just over a week ago
JB Emmons@drmakimber @joshtpm I think this is my view as well. To me, the question isn't "does *everyone* I follow migrate to Mastodon?" It's "do enough people I follow post or crosspost on Mastodon that I don't really need to open Twitter to see most of what I'm interested in?"
If the latter, I can't imagine why I'd waste my time on the other site.