The sweet spot seems to be 3 to 10 times per day (including boosts and replies, excluding Twitter cross-posts)
Posting more than 10 times/day --> diminishing returns
Posting less frequently than once per day --> stagnant growth
To learn about fedified, visit https://www.fedified.com
If growing your audience on social media isn't your thing, that's cool, but it's silly if not naive to assert that any social media network is ""supposed to be" about anything. It will be whatever the plurality of *active* participants in the network decide it will be.
Mastodon will never be whatever reactionaries say it's "supposed to be" about. That's simply not how social networks function. Never have, never will.
For specific examples, refer to IRC circa 1996 or Twitter circa Nov 5, 2022.
This whole notion of Mastodon being about connecting 1-on-1 with other persons strikes me as a fundamental misunderstanding of how online social networks operate. Mastodon has plenty of trolls and sockpuppet accounts. They run different personas/scripts/playbooks than the ones you'll find on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Insta, etc but make no mistake about it: they're here.
Anyone who believes that there's a genuine human person behind every avatar of a cat or a dog is assuming major risk.
I've been on social media since 1996- long before it was even known as social media. I was among the earliest FB users- back when it was only open to Harvard, Stanford, and a few other schools. Several good friends + long-time acquaintances were early employees at FB, LinkedIn, Yahoo, AOL, among others. I've served on advisory boards for Twitter and Doximity.
Speaking from decades of experience: Mastodon isn't unique. It's exactly where it should be at this stage in its development.
Right about now is the time when early adopters get annoyed by the newcomers. I've been there, and I get it. But responding to a benign observation about building an audience isn't going to change the trajectory of this place.
And, right now, Mastodon is at a critical inflection point. It's crossed beyond the point of no return: it is firmly in the valley of death for social media networks. There are only two outcomes at this point:
- become a dominant social network
- crash and burn
I say this because the technical discussions have firmly shifted from feature development to scalability. Scaling infrastructure, moderation, and federation is easier said than done.
Scaling will consume resources that were previously dedicated to customization and bespoke implementations. This shift will drive away participants that conflate federated social media with federated chat rooms.
If done poorly, scaling will annoy new participants. Mastodon's onboarding is an obvious weakness. Once new users are onboarded, the UI is laden with jargon and the UX is opinionated in counterintuitive ways- this creates friction for mainstream users who just want to do one of 2 things:
- publish content to their audience
- consume content as a member of the audience
The challenge stems from orthogonal demands: 1) scaling alienates early-adopters and 2) scaling in response to overwhelming demand exacerbates the onboarding headaches and undermines user experience.
That's where Mastodon is *right now*
Where Mastodon goes largely depends on whether the UI/UX issues can be addressed by a 3rd-party client, like the much-anticipated @ivory (h/t @paul) *and* how well large Mastodon instances handle surges in traffic.
If there's no clarity on either front soon, then Mastodon will keep burning fuel to achieve escape velocity only to find that it reached orbit by jettisoning all the passengers and much of the crew. At that point, the users that remain will be left with a highly-scalable social network that nobody wants to use b/c they moved onto something else.
*Or* servers will slow to a crawl, users will get fed up, and go somewhere else.
Someone asked why there's no third option-- why there isn't a scenario where Mastodon goes back to the way it was a month ago. The short answer is that most early adopters are already plotting their exit, and they'll have left by the time Mastodon reaches orbit or crashes into the ocean
That's the nature of early adopters
From a purely product dev standpoint, early adopters 1) actively seek innovative products, 2) claim them as their own, 3) move onto the next new thing. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Anywho, all that to say: don't shoot the messenger. Mastodon's a great alternative to Twitter, and demonstrates potential for becoming a sustainable, step-function improvement over the billionaire-funded platforms we have today. In order to realize Mastodon's full potential, it will need to adapt to accommodate small and independent business ventures. It costs money to keep these servers running, someone needs to figure out how to keep the lights on. And, I'd favor an ecosystem that builds...
opportunities for many as opposed to funneling money to petulant bigoted billionaires. To that end, helping content creators build their audiences is going to be a crucial next step for Mastodon.
So, next time I post about building an audience, I hope the folks who reflexively reject the notion will pause to imagine a future where self-funded Mastodon instances leave billionaires fuming atop a $44b pile of flaming bird shit.
Final thought, and I mean this respectfully and earnestly: it's not safe for anyone to approach social media in the same way they approach a work acquaintance. Jan 6th is a direct result of too many people equating social media with the real world. Putting too much stock into online interactions is also how people get catfished and scammed. While it's fine to look for shared interests and to invest in virtual acquaintanceships, setting boundaries is key to staying safe online.
@DataDrivenMD I’d argue that Mastodon isn’t about “growing one’s audience”, though, but about having interactions with other human beings, in a two-way fashion.
@IPEdmonton It's a social media network. Different people use social media for different reasons. At the end of the day, social media users always fall into one of two categories: content creators or content consumers. Topic-specific communities develop over time as the network matures. That's been the pattern for 26+ years, and it's true now. Mastodon is no different.
@IPEdmonton Just IMO, but I think a lot of people are riding a hype train right now and looking for the next social media opportunity. Maybe they know something I don't, but my expectation is that they'll fade away as they realize this isn't going to work the way they want it to because of its design and no one can change that because BDFL.
@DataDrivenMD
Why are we striving to grow audiences? Is this a business thing so we can sell more <whatever>?
@laseletzky
@tarheel @DataDrivenMD who said anything about “striving” to grow an audience? Personally, I thought this was an interesting observation by a person doing good work here.
If it doesn’t apply, let it fly…
@tarheel Well, growing an audience is how you get people to click the "herereadthis.wordpress..." link on your profile, for starters.
@DataDrivenMD
Well, in my particular case, that blog is just literally my web log in the old sense, generates no income, and I'm not a politician. It's just a "if you want to know more" kind of a thing.
I don’t see why there isn’t a 3rd possible option:
Most new people lose interest and Mastodon will have about the number of instances and audience(s) it had before.
@DataDrivenMD makes me think of you, @mikka
@DataDrivenMD I disagree because the same is true for meat space and work colleagues aren't automatically safe.
@DataDrivenMD Great thread! What are your thoughts about Tumblr‽ Many people are reactivating old accounts nowadays.
Tumblr will also embrace ActivityPub soonish (this month or the next one) as well as the Matrix protocol.
@darnell To me, going back to Tumblr feels on par with going "back" to LinkedIn. I mean, I guess. I suppose it could work, but I never really used it in that way...so maybe?
That said, I get why some people would see Tumblr as a viable fallback
@DataDrivenMD
I think people are flocking to Tumblr do to it being familiar.
@DataDrivenMD great thread. Thank you.
@rabbisandra Thank you for reading it
@DataDrivenMD
Actually perhaps the opposite, people should approach social media in the same way they approach the real world.
In the real world one cannot have 2.5M acquaintances, it is proven that we can keep tap on somewhere between 100 to 200 people.
Once we cross that number becomes an asymmetric relationship, an audience of followers.
Audience is not 'social', it is 'broadcasting'.
@kikobar @DataDrivenMD Quite possibly anyone who has 2.5M “acquaintances” is part of the problem. Large instances are also part of the problem. A lot of us left Twitter for a reason, and it was not because we wanted to replicate the hellscape here. I did not “migrate.” I had not really used Twitter for years, so I just shut down my accounts. Those whom I left behind? Maybe I will meet them here in the afterlife, maybe not. And maybe we do not really need more lemmings.
@kikobar @DataDrivenMD I see no reason to facilitate the migration of the digital equivalent of the Kardashians. If people’s interests are confined to the development of mass followings to serve hollow commercial interests, maybe they could move to a different pasture. Just because they have always plundered the commons in the past does not mean we should encourage them to do it again.
@billday @kikobar @DataDrivenMD
Those people will end up on Post. Post is made for the big accounts of Twitter to go to and have a large following. They can even make money off it there.
You make fair points about expectations. I would add and *underscore* that a critical feature for social media platforms is trust in ownership -- not to abuse the power that ownership grants.
Zuckerberg violated user privacy and his business model enabled Brexit and other authoritarian fear mongering political movements to gain an advantage via targeted disinformation.
Exhibit A:
Why I left FB years ago:
@DataDrivenMD I have had more negative outcome encounters with work colleagues than online connections. The key is setting expectations.
@DataDrivenMD truth & excellent points.
@DataDrivenMD you mistake the #fediverse social network for a content and ad delivery system.
Your conclusion is built on a false premise.
@DataDrivenMD sorry but as a new user here, found it uncomfortable to see many many of your posts every few minutes! It’s looks like you are the only person on this platform
@Pifar You can follow hashtags on Mastodon, so just select some hashtags that interest you and your timeline won't be boring anymore
@DataDrivenMD One option that I'm hoping for is for "Mastodon" to go the way of email, as in there are plenty of free servers but also plenty of subscription services. Running both infrastructure and development at scale requires funds and money from just data mining and advertising is neither healthy for democracy and is frankly probably not close to sufficient. Unique selling points could include moderation and servers federated/blocked, privacy, verification, infrastructure etc.
@CubeThoughts I think you're spot on
@DataDrivenMD This is a fascinating thread. But have we seen any evidence that early adopters are leaving?
@DataDrivenMD I think your monologue was very insightful but I really don’t think that there’s a difference between “crash and burn” and “go back to what it was like before”. ActivityPub is not a social network! But there are many social networks built with ActivityPub, most overlapping, many not, with completely different functional reasons for existing that have nothing to do with what the rest of the world does or doesn’t do. ActivityPub was already an established Internet technology that will continue to serve the functions it was designed for when early adopters and online addicts all move on to the next shiny thing, which might not even be social networks at all.
I think trying to apply analysis that explains what happened to Orkut, MySpace, G+, Twitter and Facebook is leading you in wrong directions. If generalizing the trajectories of corporate content silos accurately describe Fediverse, then the entire experiment was a complete failure and we should have all just stayed on Facebook and enjoyed our hellscape.
@DataDrivenMD Once upon a time, FTP sites were social spaces. We all visited them, we talked about them, we left each other notes in /pub/incoming, different sites had a history people knew about; they were cultural objects of a kind. Over time, that faint whisp of placefulness got sucked away by the rich experiences offered by HTML and other technologies, and FTP became more like a storm sewer than a place for people. We all still used it, we all still depended on it, we just never thought about it anymore. It didn’t crash and burn, we just changed how we conceptualize it in our lives. Email has done something similar, going from the core of our online social experience to being just a piece of technology we use every once in a while. I think that’s the third alternative. It’s an alternative that doesn’t exist for commercial products that are all about exploiting our desire for a certain kind of novelty that doesn’t require difficult change. When you remove the profit motive and the intention to exploit people, other outcomes open up.
@DataDrivenMD Today, there are people using Gopher and USENET to perform exactly the functions they were designed for before they became major social phenomenons and then burned out. I have no fear that someone who enjoyed using Mastodon a year ago will be able to find a corner of the ActivityPub network they still enjoy ten years from now, no matter how the Twitter migration shakes down, and even if it crashes and burns.
@DataDrivenMD there is also a possibility that the original inhabitants might stay and form their own 'galaxies'. A 'galaxy' being a collection of instances which federate primarily with each other and have limited federation with the fediverse as a whole.
This phenomenon has already existed to some extent.
Such 'galaxies' might not necessarily advertise their existence to the network as a whole.
Some early adopters here chose here because it was 'smaller' and not because it was innovative.
@DataDrivenMD @ivory @paul also, maybe don't censor your customers Dr...
@DataDrivenMD @ivory @paul surely it's also heavily dependent on whether the new users migrating from twitter stay / continue to use the network. If they leave (fully entitled to do so), the momentum & justification for those that have switched diminishes, and becomes a self-fulfilling spiral of extiction (not wishing this scenario BTW!)
@DataDrivenMD It’s not a SM platform vs platform thing, this is all an open source model issue. After OSS projects reach viability, there are questions of building more features vs making it easier for noobs vs monetization. There is usually not a consensus on the path forward. Treating Mastodon like VC-backed platforms where success is clearly defined growth and DAU/MAUs is a recipe for disappointment. Expectations should be everything will go in fits and starts.
@DataDrivenMD so pleased to read this - have said this to many people now. This is the key moment - either it survives and thrives as its own thing, or it evaporates as everyone leaves / annoyed by the 15 min of fame that ruined it for the people originally on here. May depend more than anything what Musk does next (i.e. out of Mastodon's control)
@DataDrivenMD I like it here. Previously I used Twitter for getting timely COVID and science news and now I can get it here. I love mastodon because it doesn’t have ads and people are friendlier. I went back to the birdsite less and less each day. The fact that Elon Musk is broadcasting on the birdsite just disgusts me enough to not wanting to go back.
@DataDrivenMD not sure that unique is the goal? Perhaps sufficiently different to be of interest is a more helpful benchmark?
Right now, I am seeing more 1-2-1 engagement on Mastodon that all of my other social feeds put together. Partly because it’s new, and engagement on social networks tends to start high, and wane over time.
Partly, I think, because there is no algo, so people are in control of what they see.
@DataDrivenMD given your experience what do think the future holds for mastodon. I acknowledge this invites a “I don’t own a crystal ball” style answer
@michellelaverick I tried to expand on my comments in the thread, but the short version is: I think it's too early to tell. There's no good alternative to Twitter besides Mastodon. This is Mastodon's race to lose, but that's no guarantee that it will ultimately win. I think we'll all have a better sense for "what's next" in about 3-4 weeks.
@DataDrivenMD yes, there’s argument that confidence in Twitter IF it endures a major outage. Although mastodon has experienced an uptick, the mass exodus from twiter has yet to materialise. I don’t think it will be triggered by the return of Trump. People seem to have developed a high tolerance to toxicity, & algorithms fuel engagement via outrage/hate/anger…
I go back further - 1982 - and have been here many times before. When i first got on two weeks ago I looked around and realized that this is just like 1993 ... Usenet, disconnected networks ... everything all about to expode into the accelerated arrival of the Internet bound by the common protocol of TCP/IP
The same trend - new users /old users - happened then., as did a culture shift on the network
My big concern is whether Mastodon can scale with the architecture it has.
@jimcarroll I share your concern. The activity pub model looks great on paper and even in practice at a small scale. With highly-federated instances and many large accounts generating traffic across the bandwith consumed by functionally duplicative data streams starts looking wasteful and costly real quick.
But I also have faith that when something has momentum, greater minds than I figure it out!