Mastodawn

April Dunford Nov 8, 2022

I've been thinking about Mastodon vs Twitter and positioning. It's a neat case study on understanding value vs features.

Mastodon has many differentiated features - federated servers, content moderation, no ads, etc. But the opportunity for them is to clearly position the value those features enable. Example - users should understand the value of decentralization (no company owns your data) vs. seeing this as simply something different from Twitter and kind of a pain. #positioning #marketing

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Babak Nov 8, 2022

@aprildunford Exactly! “not centralized” is a feature not user valie. Maybe “not xyz” works when xyz comes with known user benefits/challenges. Salesforce’s “not software” is an interesting case and it was successful because it differentiated itself from competitors in a clear and succinct way. Otherwise, “software” is not directly about user benefit and may be closer to a product feature but the user benefits from not having to manage ownership of a software was clear.

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April Dunford

@zad I was competing with Salesforce when they launched the "no software" thing and when they did they were very clear about the value - you could use CRM even if you didn't have an IT department. The alternatives at the time all needed IT to get it up and running. "No Software" was the equivalent of Avis's famous "We try harder" vs Hertz.