I’ve signed up for a Mastodon account. I had a poke around there a few years ago but it was almost entirely people talking about how great Mastodon is. Now there seems to be a (sub)critical mass of people where you can just have a conversation about stuff that isn’t Mastodon. It’s got a bit of the quiet pub vibe that Ideni.ca did back in 2010ish. So far it’s nice.
My handle there is @megaslippers@mastodon.org.uk so follow me there.
Why am I there? Well I guess I’m hedging my bets as to where my online friends end up. Posting on both Mastodon and Twitter but without cross posting. @sil@mastodon.social had a very good post on his reasoning for not cross posting. Why spend the effort on both? Well I think you have to give the new platform a fair chance and interact rather than just becoming another dead account.
Some scattershot observations on it:
- Musk buying Twitter seems to be a much bigger kick up the ass than I’d expected
- The sign-up process is baffling fewer people now & users have grokked federation better
- The software seems much more slick and responsive than five years ago
- I think there’s still an vibe that Mastodon.social is the real server. Which is obviously bobbins but I would still rather have an account there maybe?
Let’s see where this goes.