Steve Troughton-SmithI'll be honest, not being able to get a handle on mastodon.social put me off adopting Mastodon for quite a while (until I found the invite system). While I'm glad there are other instances, that doesn't really help you if the one instance you do want to be on is full. This is my third Mastodon account, but the one I'll stick with
Łukasz Kuczborski@stroughtonsmith Best instance! Welcome! 👋
John: Mr. Husband@stroughtonsmith if you find (or know of) a good mastodon for new people guide pls share 😅
Internet Hedgehog@BlackJohnRoss @stroughtonsmith I went with mas.to because it makes for a nice and short handle :v
johnwhitley@stroughtonsmith Related, as my wife just discovered: it can be quite hard to sort out what instance you want to be on *before* you have an account! Afterwards, it gets a lot easier b/c of increased community access.
Jeff Hedlund@johnwhitley @stroughtonsmith I kind of just picked one not knowing what was best, what community access increases based on the instance?
@jhedlund @stroughtonsmith There are quite a number of topical instances where there's going to be an increased balance of that content. e.g. infosec.exchange, ruby.social, front-end.social, macstories.net, and more popping up all the time. (e.g. BTS/Army folks starting their migrations.) It's a big reason why it's nice that @[email protected] added the ability to follow the local posts of other instances.
@jhedlund @stroughtonsmith @[email protected] And to address your point about access, that would mostly apply re: visibility on these topical instances. Essentially, another way to blend forum-style communication patterns with follower social-network patterns.
@johnwhitley @stroughtonsmith @icecubesapp Nice, thanks for the explanation, I hadn't thought about the "Local" instance chatter, that makes sense
gh0sti 
@stroughtonsmith try @ivory as a client.
Modug@stroughtonsmith there’s an invite system?! Had no idea. I’ve had to switch servers because my old one shut down. Been wanting to get on mastodon.social to prevent this from occurring again.
Jacob Wegner@Modug @stroughtonsmith I had the same issue and only found an invite link through some judicious Googling…
Here is a link if anyone else is looking to signup on mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/invite/EiKTQ6J5
Here is a link if anyone else is looking to signup on mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/invite/EiKTQ6J5
Justin Modugno@jacobwegner @stroughtonsmith I found one pretty easily from googling as well. Worked well and was able to transfer my following list in like 5 minutes.
monkeydom, Ar.T@stroughtonsmith Hi there! 👋
Joseph blake@stroughtonsmith I’m just so glad you found a new home to share your thoughts, Your absence from Twitter left a hole in my timeline so I joined mastodon just to follow you.
Stand up for 🏳️⚧️&🏳️🌈 rights@stroughtonsmith Thanks a lot. Since reading your post I was able to snag an invite on the mastodon.social instance which was also the one I wanted. I did not know that you could get an invite before reading your toot.
Jorge Rosas@calixtod @stroughtonsmith if you’re allowed to, can you send me an invite? Thx!
@calixtod thank you, doesn't seem to work. It just takes me to the home page for mastodon.social
@jorgexls https://mastodon.social/invite/7dmxP9ZQ try this one now instead. Please do it quickly.
@calixtod that worked, thank you!
iOSLife@calixtod @stroughtonsmith how does one get an invite?
@ioslife i made an invite link to share the love https://mastodon.social/invite/vmq9ukW6 you will follow me by clicking this but I post seldomly and on tech stuff mostly.
@calixtod Awesome, thank you!
dschns@calixtod
Hello. How does that work? I would also like to switch to the mastodon.social instance.
Hello. How does that work? I would also like to switch to the mastodon.social instance.
@dschns i can get you an invite. https://mastodon.social/invite/tg9HKd8f
@calixtod Great! It worked. Thanks!
Jamie Shaw@stroughtonsmith I had the same thoughts, instead I signed up over at mas.to.
After realising that sign-ups were available again, and that instances could be aliased, I retired the former, linked, and migrated to .social
Uli Kusterer (Not a kitteh)@stroughtonsmith Interesting! I intentionally wanted another instance (and a smaller one — though this one is huge these days as well), so the local timeline would be usable like the firehose of early Twitter.
Not that this instance is small by any measure, AFAIK Chaos is the biggest German computer/information security club, and there's lots of people like me here who aren't members and just loosely associated with it. They had to lock down new joins a while ago, even with invites.
Darren McGuicken@uliwitness @stroughtonsmith I moved to the .ie instance from .social for the same reason, it basically gives me a ‘free’ additional timeline full of—in this case—basically local news. Since I can follow ‘my interests’ via hashtags across the fediverse, a geographically local timeline seemed like the thing to otherwise prioritise.
@dmcgk Yeah, makes total sense. Chaos is a German club, so there is a bit of that in my instance choice as well, and many politically active people in there as well.
mrkite@uliwitness @stroughtonsmith Same.. plus the hachyderm local timeline is full of makers and devs.
Alexander Blach@stroughtonsmith Glad to read from you again. Welcome back!
Rodrigo Escobar@stroughtonsmith just like you, I did seek a mastodon.social account but after getting it, I realised the local timeline was too noisy and didn’t make sense for me. Luckily, hachyderm.io has a nice and diverse dev community. @nova et al do a fantastic job on everything #Hachyderm related. I don’t think I’d be happier in any other instance
alexmarchant@stroughtonsmith what made you want to join mastodon.social specifically?
@alexmarchant that's pretty easy; 1) that's where everybody I want to talk to went, and 2) I feel like the owner has the platform's best interests in mind and isn't just some random person who set up an instance
@stroughtonsmith fair enough