Whither Mastodon?

The New Year festivities are a distant memory now!

(At least for me, if not for you then you obviously had a livelier time than me!  😉 )

Now’s the time to start looking at some of the business left over from last year.

In particular, I’m referring to what do we do about Twitter?

I don’t know what Elon is going to do over there now, maybe he’ll succeed, maybe he won’t.

Prudence dictates that we have a Plan B.

And, while it’s still early innings, Mastodon looks like an early contender.

I say early because I still sometimes get search results for an extinct form of elephant while doing my research.

I have set up my own account:

@Con@techhub.social

Right now, I’m still in the exploratory phase.

I’m only following five others and no one follows me yet.  🙁

(Looks like the spammers haven’t moved over yet.)

Anecdotally, I’m hearing that major Twitter users have begun to migrate over as well.

However, when I mention setting up accounts to others, I detect a certain lack of enthusiasm.

Almost like social media fatigue.

(The Horror!)

Would it take Twitter going down the drain to force a mass migration to Mastodon and other services?

Or, would folks just stop using tools like Twitter altogether?

While Mastodon has a certain functional similarity to Twitter, there are significant differences.

One big one is that Mastodon’s posts can have up to 500 characters as opposed to Twitter’s 280.

That’s going to be a difference!

Another is that user statistics are buried away and require some effort to find.

One quirk of Mastodon is having to decide which server to join when signing up.

Something else to research!

Finally, for the moment, Mastodon is not supported by scheduling platforms like Hootsuite.

Lack of automation tools could be a deal killer for platforms such as Mastodon.

But, for the moment, I’m in with Mastodon!

I’ll report periodically on what I find and what other viable alternatives to Twitter may be out there.

And, of course, I’ll be keeping an eye on Twitter too!

(Something tells me that it’s going to be a long year!)

That’s it for now!

Please check out my 8 step approach for developing a social media program for more ideas on how to use social media.

Also, never forget to reach out to either ask questions or to ask for help from someone like myself!

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog.

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have. I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

And, remember!

I do this for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me. Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.

I can also be reached at conpsweeney@someddi.com