Bastian AllgeierThe federated approach to Mastodon keeps me excited. It's still really unclear how it works from the outside. though. I feel it's a packaging problem. There needs to be more marketing and fluffiness about it. Why would I want to start my own instance? Where are the benefits? How do I move my content over? Can I still stay friends with the people here at mastodon.social? Etc. In the end it needs to be a simple one-click decision. It needs to feel light and enjoyable.
Hotrob’@bastianallgeier I think a lot of these will be answered/ironed out after they won't on scalability and stability. It's not quite ready for a mainstream audience yet, so I think the marketing and fluffiness will come later.
@Hotrob I totally understand that the fluffiness isn't the top priority at the moment and to be honest I'm quite confident that @Gargron is on the right track with all this stuff. The current state of Mastodon already shows this. There's a lot of love in the UI and sweat in the details. But I really believe that it's vital for the service to become more accessible for non-techie people to not just end up as another Diaspora or App.net.
@Gargron @Hotrob I also see one other important point. Where's the potential to make Mastodon profitable? Not in the Silicon Valley sense of profitable, but in an honest, sustainable way. I always hated this about Twitter. It was clear from day one, that they are spending someone else's money and there will be an end to that. With Mastodon I'm more afraid that @Gargron will come to a point where he's no longer able to move forward personally without money.
@bastianallgeier A few ways I can think of is paid only instances, for the swag factor (it would also cut down on harassment), ad-supported/advertiser friendly instances, and -say it with me- selling user data.
My hope - and it's a long shot- is large entity uptake. Canada Post wants to start its own social media network (lord knows why), but if they used a mastodon/mastodon federated back end for it, it could work well, be cost effective, and have enough critical mass to help it take off.