Op-ed: Why the great #TwitterMigration didn’t quite pan out
Op-ed: Why the great #TwitterMigration didn’t quite pan out
The flight from Musk's Twitter to the "free" fediverse never really took off.
Things to think about and lessons to learn.
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This article kind of misses the forest for the trees. While I agree with many of the author's points, that's not why the #TwitterMigration failed. It failed because Twitter/Mastodon isn't really a social networking site, and Mastodon didn't provide the same service that Twitter does. At its core, Twitter is about small numbers of (usually famous or important) users communicating with large audiences of followers. #TwitterMigration failed because not enough of those famous and important people moved from Twitter to Mastodon, so the average user had no content they cared to read. Seeing posts from your friends about what they had for dinner last night is all well and good, but the stuff people actually want to see is famous person A throwing shade at famous person B while famous person C talks about the new movie they're in and important organization D posts a warning about severe weather in the area. You don't go to Twitter to have discussions, you go to Twitter to get news and gossip direct from the source.
In contrast, sites like Reddit and kBin/Lemmy are about having group conversations around a topic. Interacting with famous people is neat but not the point. Think of Reddit/kBin/Lemmy as random conversations at a party whereas Twitter/Mastodon is some random person on the corner shouting to a crowd from a soapbox. #RedditMigration has a much better chance of succeeding simply because the purpose of the site is different. As long as enough people move to kBin/Lemmy to have meaningful conversations (aka content), it will have succeeded.
not enough of those famous and important people moved from Twitter to Mastodon
This is the reason I'm still using Twitter. I use Twitter not to tweet about what I did, but to get news from people I follow.
Tech people can move to Mastodon because their circles are moving, but not with common people.
For me, personally, Mastodon is like empty void. No one to follow and I can't interact with people who share same interests because they only exist on Twitter (since the "famous people" isn't moving from Twitter)Wait until Meta joins the microblogiverse gunning for those VIP accounts eager too leave Twitter.
But Twitter only show you the messages from the people you follow that benefit Twitter.
The famous people did move over for certain specific groups; app developers are pretty much all on Mastodon now, the WWDC chatter / visionOS experimentation / etc is way more active on there than on Twitter. (Of course if any group ought to be uniquely pissed off at both Twitter and Reddit, it’s app developers)
Reddit migration will succeed for some communities and fail for others. Generic subs can live on with new mods and new subscribers. They're not much different from FB or Twitter. Just mindless content to feed that infinite scroll.
Specialized subs where the community as a whole (or a majority at least) decides to move to a new home will move (or have moved already), because for those the community is what matters, not the venue.
%100 this. I have Mastodon and use it sparingly because I found a good community but I still find myself going back to Twitter because most of the people I follow on Twitter haven't moved and most of the people I follow on Twitter are celebrities or influencers. The only way a #twittermigration will work is if most of the influencers and celebrities move off the platform as that's the content most regular users go for. With Reddit however we just need people that create good content to move, the lurkers will follow the content regardless of how "complicated" the platform is. The reddit lurkers won't stay on Reddit if there isn't any quality content being posted there, they may be satiated with reposts for a while but eventually they will leave and go looking for the content and if that content is on Kbin/Lemmy they will come here.