I think the real “problem” the fediverse has isn’t that it’s hard to use, it’s that it doesn’t fit the pattern. It’s like if someone asks “what grocery do you order from?” and you respond “My building’s co-op, I get meals & fresh food delivered from participating farms & cooks— I do solar panel maintenance and run the website in return— plus goodie fees”
“goodie fees? … um … so is that like UberEats then?”
And what’s worse is it sounds more complex because it’s atypical— but really it’s easier
@futurebird I saw a take recently that part of the problem is that, to some extent, folks on Fedi are self-selected as somewhat techie, and we collectively are doing a bad job of explaining to less-techie folks by explaining TOO MUCH.
If we would just all say "hey friend, join the Fediverse, here's an invite link" and leave out the "on my server, you can choose another if you want, etc, etc", and let them figure it out from there, would it work better?
@tim @futurebird This resonates with me. Asking overly complex questions, not "stopping at 'Yes' ", adding qualifiers to un-asked questions, all of it.
Certainly my own excitement can cause me to go against what I know are "best practices" for selling.
@TrillionB @tim @futurebird the problem is expecting volunteers and techies to have the laser-focused messaging of a billion-dollar psychologist-enhanced advertising and PR department
all it really takes is one PR person working at Facebook to send out an "explainer" to the NYT that says "Mastodon is for dumb nerds" in diplomatic-sounding language for that to be the entire narrative, because Facebook is considered an "industry leader in social media" and capitalists will close ranks the moment there's any sort of grassroots threat to their exploitative business model
That's fair, the earliest "Mastodon is a failure" article that I've seen dates back to 2017 and quite frankly it sounds dreadful. No usernames, just numbers. *smh*
I mean, I blew in with the November leaves but it seems to have really taken off.
myrmepropagandist
Tim W RESISTS
Trillion Byter
★ Amy Star ★
PJ "Vote Green" Coffey