As Twitter ditches its iconic branding in favor of owner Elon Musk’s favorite letter “X,” its open source competitor Mastodon is once again seeing usage numbers soar.
Addiction it is. They think they are advocating for health and social justice. But they’re not. They’re just addicted to Twitter/X. I mean… it’s owned by someone who pays fascists to post on there, but they are still there? WTAF?
Once the celebrities or official pages or figure people leave that site for its dismaying complications, that will be the doom of it as followers of those don’t have other significant reasons to stay.
I don’t like twitter nor Elon but why would someone leave a platform because they would change their name?
Elon has done more damage before so people who would consider leaving should be long gone.
Maybe because this new decision is so unbelievably idiotic either it is the last straw or maybe some people realize
twitterx is lost cause? Idk.I don’t like twitter nor Elon but why would someone leave a platform because they would change their name?
Twitter has been around for so long, many are attached to it on an emotional level. It’s older than my eldest niece; she’s known about it since she could memorize the damn word.
So as dumb as it is that THIS is what pushes people to leave, I’m glad more are leaving regardless.
It’s a “final straw” situation. No individual straw broke the back of the proverbial camel. One straw after another was placed atop it until finally the back broke. It’s not the final straw that broke said back, but the load of all the straws including the final that did it.
So they’re not necessarily quitting because of the name change. They’re quitting because of everything else plus the name change. That was the thing that pushed the go/no-go decision into “go”.
You’re not wrong, but consider that people who justified sticking around for some reason or another might leave because the brand change (to a name that is so brain dead even a little offensive) finally hits home for them that it isn’t going to be the same.
A brand name change is about the single most overt thing you can do to send the message that a product isn’t going to be the same. And when that happens, people tend to look at the recent trends for that product to get an idea of what to expect. The recent trends for Twitter happen to be right-wing echo chamber.
So yeah, the people who were going to leave have largely already left. But this brand change is going to be effective at galvanizing those who remain.
Make sense.
You could make the argument that all his previous outrageous behaviors were desperate attempts to squeeze more money out of a business he didn’t understand. But this… this is unhinged. It’s so bafflingly pointless and dumb it’s become clear that what was once a reliable dopamine delivery system could, without warning or reason, just… disappear one day. Even the people who rely on Twitter like addicts are starting to come up with exit strategies.
I’d argue as well that all the past dumb decisions, (Twitter Blue, anybody being able to name themselves anything they want, bugs everywhere, not being able to see anything without an account), all of that was just stuff you only had to passively bear. Now, it’s a brand change that will at least have you typing something different into Google to reach “X,” but it is still an active change you have to make.
If I had a Twitter account that was connected to my business, already had a whole bunch of followers, and was somewhat addicted to Twitter, I could understand having a hard time leaving. At the very least inertia would be a good enough reason for people to stay. But switching the brand recognition?
- First off, you’ve disrupted the Twitter addictions of everyone on the site, because you’d have to know that blue bird logo is associated with a lot of people’s dopamine responses
- Second off, now that people are already being forced to make a change, there’s less opportunity cost to jump ship to elsewhere
Anyone recommend a good iPhone app for Mastodon?
Ice Cubes is great for me, beautiful UI and cute sound effects
I use Tusker and it’s been great so far. More features than the official app, and it’s pretty stable too.
Is he saying we should all X communicate?
I hear ya… The advantage that Lemmy and kbin have over Mastodon is that Redditors tend to be more technically inclined than Twitter users, so ditching Reddit for Lemmy was easy, while I only know a grand total of three people on Mastodon, and two of them are tech YouTubers.
But in the other hand lemmy seems much more mature than lemmy.
Don’t get me wrong, the experience has been rapidly growing in recent weeks thanks to the proliferation of third party apps 👍 But Mastodon’s first party experience feels solid and their new official app just blends in any mainstream app.
I assume you mean Mastodon seems much more mature than Lemmy?
Yeah, I’d agree with you there. I’ve had zero issues trying to find people and content on Mastodon, while I have had federation issues with Lemmy. And I do use the official Mastodon app.
My only gripe with Mastodon is that it isn’t obvious that you should follow hashtags. I didn’t know this at first and struggled to get into it with post after post complaining about Elon, but once I figured out to follow hashtags, I like it now. I’m just annoyed that all the artists I follow on Twitter are flocking to Threads and Bluesky instead of Mastodon though.
Redditors tend to be more technically inclined than Twitter users
This used to be true, but Reddit has been mainstream for years now. Today’s average Redditor is likely pretty similar to the average Twitter user.
I feel like when the Reddit API controversy happened I was more inclined to switch due to the blackout vs Twitter which didn’t have nearly as instant of an event that would happen to get me off. Now all of a sudden because of Reddit I’m on various Fediverse projects such as Funkwhale, Mastodon, Kbin, and Lemmy.
When a quarter of the replies on Reddit have become “this” or “💯” or “^^,” which it feels like it became when I left, I’d agree with you.
I remember when you’d get ripped apart and down voted to hell for daring to use an emoji on Reddit when commenting. People hated it. Then one day it was fine to do it, no one cared anymore. I guess that’s around when Reddit became mainstream, maybe.
Probably cause more and more users gravitated to mobile where it became commonplace to include emojis in posts. I remember too when using emojis was a mortal sin. At most you could use an emoticon but that was it.
Back when I started using Reddit it was frowned upon to post OC. I remember some subs had rules that you would be banned if you more than like 10% of your posts were OC.
bump
This
^^
nice
fr fr
Is
And my axe!
Plus there’s some staying power to posts on here
I’m replying to what you wrote 10 hours ago. My local feed would be a lot of shit before I ever saw this
And it’s 100% relevant to the area of content I wanted to read. Same if I went to a gaming or news related group
So the rebrand comes with X promising to be an app to replace everything?
X gonna give it to ya, X gonna deliver it to ya.
He wants something like WeChat that does everything.
Less than 1% of twitter users signed up to pay for twitter blue. And less than 1% of twitter users are going to do their banking through a social media site run by a megalomaniac. This is doomed to failure, just like it was 20 years ago.
As painful as it might be for him, this dude really needs to let go of his obsession with the letter X.
Source it was 1%?
That’s going to be challenging. The latest metrics show that only 0.2 percent of Twitter users are paying for Twitter Blue. Twitter Blue did have an estimated 116,000 confirmed signups on the web in March, up 138 percent from the month before, according to Similarweb. Still, that’s not nearly enough to make up for the lost money in advertising dollars.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/15/23683554/twitter-dying-elon-musk-x-company
Well, it sure sounds like X is delivering users to Mastodon.
It sounds like he’s trying to copy zombo.com (listen to the audio for at least 30 seconds to a minute - the animation is a little broken by now)
That’s a bummer, hang in there Mastodon, keep bloomscrollin
Hopefully a massive influx of Twitter jerks doesn’t kill what makes Mastodon a nice place in the first place.
I don’t want to rain on your parade but I’ll do it anyway: The numbers of active posts and members in Lemmy communities, even in the most active ones, are mindbogglingly low in comparison with Reddit, even in comparison to somethingawful what I still consider the dirty cousin of Reddit.
All the numbers are just two sizes lower than Reddit and then there is the atrocious web interface. I have stopped counting how often my posts got eaten, the reply button didn’t react and general stuff didn’t work at all.
we willget there eventually.
you can’t compare a product that is decades old wuth something that’s fairly new.
This is probably a stupid question, but for those of you that use Mastodon — how did you find people to follow?
I tried it out a few months ago but I didn’t like the few accounts they recommended, and searching for users or keywords didn’t get me too far either…
I joined via fosstodon.org much better recommendations
That’s kind of the problem I think. I was able to find like 2 people there I want to follow. Lemmy is going to be far more successful at displacing its alternative because all the communities you’d want to subscribe to are here.
There is an account called Fedi Follows on Mastodon that shares accounts according to their topics. Hope it helps.
I joined up before you could subscribe to hashtags, so my approach was:
- Read my local instance feed and click on content that interested me.
- Checked the users that made the interesting content to see if they had more.
- If they did, followed.
Nowadays I would add this step:
- Subscribe to hashtags on topics I’m interested in and follow people who regularly contribute good material to them.
What I did in the very beginning:
-
don’t worry about the instance that you are on. My server is quite generic and is meant to be a simple entrypoint to the fediverse, not a “community in itself”.
-
Go to the mastodon directory to find the list of servers based on interests. fosstodon is one for FOSS enthusiasts, beekeeping is for those interesting in gardening, mountains.social is for those that like hiking, etc. The important thing here is to find servers that are not huge, but that have an active userbase.
-
Now, the real trick: for all these servers you found that could be interesting, you go browse at the federated timeline. This will give not only the activity from people in the server, but you will also see what they are following, boosting, etc. To me this was a way to find not just interesting people, but who the interesting people are following as well.
-
Be very generous when browsing these timelines, and follow as many as you can possibly can. During the first week, try to add 50 a day.
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Follow hashtags. This will also make your timeline more lively and will bring different people who might be interesting to you.
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Write an intro post, and pin it to your profile. Usually pinned profiles are always visible between servers, so it will make it easy for people to interact with you.
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(Somewhat controversial, but I do it) If you have people that you like to follow on Twitter, follow them on Mastodon as well via a BirdSite mirror. You won’t be able to do it from the larger instances, but if you join a more chill instance (like mine ;)) it should be fine.
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Evangelize: if you have friends on Twitter, ask them to join as well. Most Mastodon servers have a way to let you send invites to others.
When you start getting the feeling that you are getting overwhelmed, it’s the time to cull down the list. Feel free to unfollow any person or hashtag that you think is too noisy or not really interesting.
-
I wrote since stuff to help new Mastodon users: https://babylon4.com/mastodon
You need to follow hashtags but primary groups. You will find groups boosting toots about your topics. It’s the first accounts to follow then you will find others.
It’s not that hard. People have to keep in mind, it’s not Twitter and so it works differently.
boosting toots
I don’t think they call it TOOTS anymore.
I’m a grandpa of mastodon.
Toots despite the proximity with tweet is good for the community aspect.
It helps if you can find a half-dozen people involved in something you like to follow at the start. Other than that, try joining a mid-sized (~1,000-3,000 users) Mastodon server based around a hobby, interest, or social group you’re a part of. Most Mastodon clients allow you to keep a column open for the people you follow as well as the people on the “Local Timeline” who are a part of your server.
It’s a new social network. If you see someone pop up who’s made a pithy post or two, give 'em a follow. If they’re not working out a week later, un-follow them. Don’t feel afraid to follow a ton of people when you first get started to liven up your feed until you find a good circle of folks.
Elon has no idea how to run a social media company. At this point he’s just trying random shit hoping it will work. Get the platform operating successfully again and then worry about branding…
gossip that Elon has no idea about running anything was circulating for a long time but since Tesla/SpaceX were not social media it was easier to manage the PR to make Musk seem like “tech and business genius, also twitter troll” regardless of what was going on behind the scenes. On Twitter every single decision hits millions of people and businesses within an hour and managing that is impossible for any PR department so we get to see the man as who he really is.
I honestly think that he believes himself to be some sort of super genius that only has good ideas, just cause he wrote some software and sold it for alot of money when he was younger.
The guy actually wrote software? Like he coded it?
He wrote something called zip2 and sold it. Then he wrote get this… x.com, which became PayPal.
Edit, because I didn’t really answer your question: yes he did code it, as far as anyone seems to know.
More importantly: he was born rich
Assuming “hoping it works” is really part of his plan for the platform.
I can fathom no world where you’d want to trade away a multi billion dollar brand for a new brand you literally can’t SEO. What, you think your brand is gonna be more impressive that the generic variable, and a part of the alphabet?
“Follow me on Twitter” becomes “follow me on X”? “You should tweet that” becomes “you should X that”? The little blue bird on every shop window, website, and business card becomes a stylized letter that, hopefully, doesn’t look so threatening on the next iteration?
It’s a textbook case of brand destruction. I almost regret never making a Twitter in the first place, just so I could quit today, or at any of the hundred days in the past year where it got inexplicably worse without reason.
The little blue bird on every shop window, website, and business card becomes a stylized letter that, hopefully, doesn’t look so threatening on the next iteration?
Haha, I know the most appropriate iteration, a red background with the X in a white circle.
Perhaps with each corner of the X at a 90 degree angle clockwise? You know, to add style points.
It makes the X go faster, everyone knows that.
Destroying the brand and ruining twitter was always the goal. There’s a good reason why Saudi Arabia fronted half of the bill…
He’s just a fan of Laurie Anderson. Give him some slack!
Watch out… language is a virus!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=UfOK0evCqZY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
“Hey, check out this X video”
I should X that sounds like I should delete/close that. How apt.
Follow me on ten.
“You should tweet that” becomes “you should X that”
“You should X-create” that
Ain’t X-ing a term for cutting something out of your life ?
Yes, and I was thinking how confusing it could be. A: “Hey, did you see that trend on X?” B: “What? No, I don’t talk to my ex anymore.”
And a tweet becomes an “X-cretion”
And retweet it become
X-Forwarded-ForitX-crement
It’s just a new form of messaging called X-communication.
oh wait.
It’s inspired by all the X-Twitter employees
We’re witnessing an X-tinction event in real time.
He’s clearly laying the groundwork to sell it to Alphabet (Google’s parent company). /s
Its a terrible rebrand that pretty much comes because of Elon’s impulses, or in other words, for shits and giggles. Regardless of this hilarious trashing of such a powerful brand, I’ll have fun calling tweets “xeets” for a good week.
“Hey bros wanna see me light $40 billion on fire?”
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia spent good money to never have an Arab Spring again.
Which is nuts because they have a nationwide content filter and could just blacklist Twitter and be done with it in 5 minutes.
Please call them Elon’s x-crements instead.
It must be so horrible working “with” him. You’re trying to build something and every morning you must be frightened to see Elon hanging on a ladder because he thought it was so funny to draw dicks everywhere on the building, which would have you cancel everything you are working on.
I’ve worked in a founder led business and this is why I quit.
I’d spend forever working on a project to build a satellite site then suddenly we don’t want that anymore - bin the recipes we want a full main site redbrand.
Bye.
Feel you, I’ve been working with this kind of person but he was pushed away a few weeks after my arrival. He still had time to make an impression though, his genius move was to tell each team that the others hated them, which had no effect because we talked to each others…
I’m just here to spread the good word about old.lemmy.world
Or Kbin! Kbin can do both microblogging and link aggregation/discussion. Tbh departing Twitter users coming to Mastodon, and reddit refugees are brought together on Kbin.
The “all-in-one” method acomplished by Kbin is a huge feat, especially when it’s built by a single person from scratch (ie; not based on lemmy codebase wise) and still much more ActivityPub compatible.
Kbin is sadly very underrated imo.
I feel that’s a feature of Lemmy to not do both. I don’t care about microblogs. I want the sites that I use to do one thing and do it as well as possible, so I can mix & match what I use, and not see what I don’t want.
Removed by mod
Can’t wait for Lemmy Enhancement Suite.
Because LES is more.
Honestly my favorite thing about Lemmy so far is that the web UI already has most of the things I wanted RES to have. And it’s all open source so we can just improve the UI directly. No need for browser changes!
Same!
Though I do miss the content/comment filters that RES could do!
Mastadon is where the smart people hang out… X is the fascist site and Facebook/Threads is the frivolous and stupid site.
Nah, Facebook and x are both fascistic sides because of the amount of qanons and magats I’ve seen on facebook
Hence why I haven’t had a Facebook or Instagram account in years.
Why aren’t posts on mastodon called “toots”?
They were called toots and they fucking got rid of it? How uncreative can you be!?
People still use it all the time, often ironically.
I’ll say that, fart jokes aside, I like just saying “posts” for everything because at this point, and in an interconnected set of networks where we’re all using multiple services I’ve frankly outgrown the need to brand each bit of text I spew onto the Internet. It’s the same reason I say “I’ll text you” instead of “I’ll whatsapp you” or whatever.
we can keep calling them toots
I vote for calling them twats instead
TL;DR: The lead dev is German and had no idea at the time that toot was American slang for farting, he thought it was just an elephant/mastodon noise.
