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
touch fluffy tailwe on the mastodon network have seen numerous migrations before.
I don't expect this one to last either. they always go back, because the addictive characteristic of the twitter discovery algorithm is not present here, and the network is designed to frustrate any attempts at building clout.
I don't expect this one to last either. they always go back, because the addictive characteristic of the twitter discovery algorithm is not present here, and the network is designed to frustrate any attempts at building clout.
🍑 gwen 🍑@drmakimber @joshtpm @fluffy speaking as someone who took part in two of those migrations (across different accounts) i didn't put down roots then like i am now (curating lists, actually learning the features, trying out different 3rd party apps, etc.) nor did anyone else i was following. i'm not yet seeing some of the smaller niche comms migrating on the same scale, but if twitter continues its decline... i think they will.
can you share which lists you're looking at? I would like to add some new people too