How to get people to use Mastodon?
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On the auto-selector, I've said it before but join-fediverse needs to ask a few questions: Service? Location? Language? Hobbies? And then it spits out one or two recommendations, with an option to load more.
While I'd be fine with an auto-selector (as I help Admin feddit.uk), it would miss out on the variety of instances out there - books, games (video, tabletop, etc), franchises, etc that some people might be looking for.
So how about 2 big points: auto-selector (based on location) and answer a couple of questions.
I think the single biggest change that Mastodon can make, as far as this goes, is to shift the Explore->Posts feed to the Home tab. Just do it like Twitter or Bluesky, make the discovery feed the first thing a new user encounters.
Lemmy is better for on-boarding on this front as they have the Local and All feeds from the start. Just having that front and centre (defaulting to Local, as you don't want to overwhelm them) would be a big help.
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yes, that's what boosting is on mastodon. see how ineffectual their 'boosting' nomenclature is? that's why they should be renamed.
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Ooh sorry, I thinking like Misskey. In the English translation, they use note and renote to replace tweet and re-tweet from Twitter era
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I can’t get with that as a person who has sound off always
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My understanding is, in the early days, you could send an SMS to Twitter to post, so the limitation was imposed by SMS and not necessarily Twitter.
No. The twitter were build with the limit in mind, in fact it is its whole spiel.
Why? It's not thar deep.
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It games the attention span of viewers. You can read 3-4 articles before getting tired or going about your day, but you can guzzle infinite number of twits, because they are small, engaging and various
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It not only games the viewers but posters too. Maybe you want to write an article, or blog post, but you know it's going to be long. So you better do it on the weekend. Or when you have more time. Which for many is never.
But writing a couple sentences? Easy! You can do it on a bus! You can do it on the toilet! And, if everyone is on the same level as you, you don't feel bad for keeping it short.
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While I'm not entirely convinced that Trunky is the best choice of names, I do agree with your overall reasoning. Mastodon was always an awkward choice for a name and probably hurt adoption quite a bit, despite all the cute elephant cartoons people ended up making. Even Pleroma (an alternative server implementation compatible with ActivityPub) sounds cooler than Mastodon, despite also being three syllables long.
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Lemmy is better for on-boarding on this front as they have the Local and All feeds from the start. Just having that front and centre (defaulting to Local, as you don’t want to overwhelm them) would be a big help.
Yup, Lemmy does it really well.
So how about 2 big points: auto-selector (based on location) and answer a couple of questions.
I think that's totally fine. The big point is that the user shouldn't choose a server. Answer a few questions that can lead to a server? OK. But as soon as you make someone choose you might be reintroducing that confusion that seems to not be very popular with normies.
While I’d be fine with an auto-selector (as I help Admin feddit.uk), it would miss out on the variety of instances out there - books, games (video, tabletop, etc), franchises, etc that some people might be looking for.
Here, I'll point to this thread by Ted Curran: https://indieweb.social/@tedcurran/113946323075198755
Also, this reply thread https://lemm.ee/comment/18473212
Ted talks about how it might be best to simply send people to one instance (a sort of starter instance) and then encourage them to move to a different, more specific one. Other users complain that account migration is insufficient.
Maybe, after improving account migration, we should send users to a few semi-random starter instances that have agreed to a certain set of rules and adhere to a set of quality standards, but then encourage them to leave by migrating their account to an instance that better matches their interests.
From what I've gathered with the replies I've been getting, this might actually be the best solution, for now. Though, of course, it does include a significant improvement over the tech side, rather than relatively simple UI changes...
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Trunky is full of bright bouncy sounds that pop
You've got to be taking the piss, right? This is serious software used by adults, not the colourful ride-on luggage for toddlers!
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The server selection problem goes away if people stop treating their hosting website as an after thought or dumb terminal. People really have to stop promoting web server software as if it's a platform, and start finding reasons to recommend actual websites to people.
Ain't nobody ever recommended phpBB to anyone who wasn't looking to host a forum.
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Sure, but phpBB boards are separate entities, not parts of a whole... So that's not really a 1 to 1 comparison, IMO.
That being said, you're right. If people started sharing instances directly instead of just saying "Mastodon," this issue would be attenuated, at the very least.
The issue is that people want the social part of social media. If you share mastodon.social, people will think "Mastodon," but if you share indieweb.social people will be confused, and possible disinterested because they don't necessarily expect to be connected to the other "Mastodons." At the end of the day, you'll always have to say it's a "Mastodon Server," and as soon as that gets brought up, I'm afraid it might push people away before they even get a foot in.
Then again, that's kind of how Discord gets shared around, so maybe that's OK, IDK.
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The geolocalized choosing is a great idea! Sometimes you join based on communities as well, in that case a “join custom server” button could be added!
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a “join custom server” button could be added!
100%!
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It’s not about it being for adults or for children. Mastodon is indeed a weird name, and people who have never heard of this platform with lots of things on their mind are more likely to dismiss it if it doesn’t immediately capture their attention / they don’t immediately know what it means.
While this naming “issue” is definitely on the bottom of priorities, I do find it worth mentioning, if only just for the sake of conversation. Plus, it’s kind of interesting to think about how something that, at first, doesn’t seem that important might influence the success of a product.
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Mastodon servers are separate entities, too. The fact that they communicate with each other doesn't change that, and the persistent desire that folks here have to imagine otherwise is a hurdle to adoption.
The mental model is of a central space that instances grant or bar access to, but that's simply not how the technology actually works. Too much effort has gone into trying to make ActivityPub-enabled websites look like something they're not (centralized social media), while totally ignoring what they are: small forums and microblogs that have optional access to other forums and microblogs.
Mastodon is web server software. "Mastodon" doesn't exist. It's an illusion. And the fact that everyone keeps trying to sell this illusion is exactly why there are all of these broken expectations and hurdles.
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When I told my best friend about mastodon, it misimprinted on her brain in a flash as "walrus chat" and now she can't for the life of her remember its actual name.
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Oh man. I had forgotten Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. I think I last played that in high school.
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My gut reaction was to reject what you said, but the more I think about it... You might have a point.
I don't know. I don't want to say too much and regret it, but you did give me plenty to think about. Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.
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Ah ha, a fellow crawler! The game's still going and getting updated!
