parker lyons
original observations: mastodon is (currently) far less entertaining than other options, but it’s far more efficient in finding meaningful connections and genuine interactions. it takes a certain kind of person to value this more, but that might become a barrier of entry that sustains the health of this community without as much intervention. good stuff! (p.s. i’ll help with the entertainment factor)
Nov 30, 2022 at 7:01pmWeb
Show threadShelenn AyresNov 30, 2022
@parker My Fediverse feeds are far more active than my FB or TW feeds. My Fediverse feeds have far fewer junk posts than my FB or TW feeds. My Fediverse network of mutual friends and followers is higher in number than my FB or TW equivalents (because I block proactively and often). My Fediverse experience is community oriented, connection rich, information value, and entertaining at times. I tend to spend more time in virtual worlds or offline for my entertainment ;) How did I accomplish this phenomenon? Using hashtags, saved searches, filters, RSS, etc - I am my own algorithm.

One celebrity that moved into the Fediverse achieved a following of 111K of 7 million Mastodon users (1.5%) within a week or so. He has 3.4 million of 238 million on TW (1.4%). He, like many who migrated in the past month, are objectively reporting better engagement (organic) in the Fediverse than they have with FB or TW.

In my view, the Fediverse has the potential to become the preferred social media engine globally - open-source decentralized approaches are the future for all social interactions online including virtual worlds aka social Metaverse platforms.
Show threadparker lyonsNov 30, 2022
@shelenn this is super interesting. appreciate the explanation on how you got it there! there’s a ton of benefit in owning your own “algo”, i guess the difficulty is how an average user has to have a pretty sophisticated understanding of how the platform works to get that level of control. i’m wondering if there’s a crowd-sourced way to “share” customized filters/hashtags to replicate fediverse feeds at the point of signup. happy to hear you’re having such a good experience!
Show threadShelenn AyresNov 30, 2022
@parker With Mastodon, hashtags are used to help each other find each other via common topics. So be generous and prolific with hashtags in profile, posts, searches, and follows. Boost/reshare generously to engage community. If a Twitter migrant, use available tools to find your Twitter folks who migrate. Mastodon is growing at a rate of 50k per day in the past month. Your people are out there and may be having just as much trouble finding you as you have finding them. Once you spend a few weeks creating your "algo", things fall into place.
Show threadparker lyonsNov 30, 2022
@shelenn amazing advice - thanks so much!
Show threadJoe Fabisevich Nov 30, 2022
@parker The smaller audience makes me a lot less incentivized to post (ugh, hate that my brain works that way), but the smaller audience makes me more likely to jump into a conversation I come across on my timeline. It reminds me of the App.net days or micro.blog, or if we’d actually come closer to succeeding in the mission of healthy conversations at Twitter. (Also naturally 30% of conversations here are about Twitter which is… not sustainable to say the least.)
Show threadparker lyonsDec 1, 2022
@mergesort haha i feel all of this! no shame in admitting how the brain has been trained for now. glad to hear you’re more comfortable interacting here! i feel the same way at least for normal discussion