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.
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)
But Twitter only show you the messages from the people you follow that benefit Twitter.
Wait until Meta joins the microblogiverse gunning for those VIP accounts eager too leave 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.
I have no idea why they are publishing pieces like this, and it's objectively false. Mastodon had over 60,000 sign-ups in the last week, and my feed is as busy as it ever was. It went from like 4 million when I signed up less than a year ago to over twelve million now.
https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount
Active users have gotten over their initial spike and have now levelled out several orders of magnitude larger than it was months ago.
https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/stats
Either this author has a poor grasp on statistics or is a Twitter superfan or has monied interests.
I think it's because there was a hope for wholesale migration of most/all users from Twitter to the Fediverse. Or at the very least for enough migration to make Twitter a barren landscape that would precipitate its imminent demise. Neither of those happened. Of course, neither of those are realistic outcomes either.
Twitter as a social media discussion platform is trash. Mastodon suffers from the same issue. The reality is those kinda of platforms rely on central figures (ie. Celebrities) to form interest.
A forum-like experience (ie. Reddit) is more reliant on community and discussion. So platforms like Kbin and Lemmy have a much better chance of gaining more traction.
Twitter‘s real world relevance is highly overvalued. Journalists who practically live there instead of doing journalist stuff elevating its cultural impact manifold. Mastodon shows how much of this impact is lost, if there aren’t enough promoters. The grassroots picture Twitter painted of itself wasn’t ever close to true, it was just a single-way microphone for narcissists. Reddit‘s cultural value is highly underrated in comparison and I believe a good alternative can catch enough nexus posters who will keep good content coming. As with every FOSS project the biggest enemies of success are the people within. Lemmy (as Mastodon) has a lot of difficulties with fracturing due to its federated nature and the differentiation between kbin and Lemmy is already divisive for the community. I hope the more technical minded audience of Reddit is able to overcome these barriers for entry and find a new home here.
Underrated reply. Twitter is definitely a place where a bunch of people follow a small group of famous people and content creators almost like lemmings. (The irony that lemmy isn't like despite users being called lemmings isn't lost on me)
Mastodon is a bit better, but also strangely seems to be focused on big names and groups as well, just different ones and to a lesser extent. It's one of the reasons I spend less time on there and more on Kbin / Lemmy.
On the positive side, it's from Mastodon that I learned about Kbin and Lemmy to begin with.
Hoping this doesn't meet the same fate, but with not enough people ditching reddit, it's hard to see it turning out much different.
If you're expecting everyone to leave Reddit, you're going to be disappointed. Most Reddit users do. Not. Care. They'll stay for as long as Reddit entertains them.
The Twitter migration was actually a really great thing for the Fediverse. It diversified Mastodon, and made it an actually lively space. It's still a nerdy space, but it's so much more than it was. It's a genuinely general and engaging microblogging space. And while, yes, it doesn't have everything that draws the Twitter clout chasers, celebrity watchers, and journalists or politicians, it's a viable alternative for people who are looking to actually engage with each other.
The same is true here, and will be true after tomorrow.
Edit: Autocorrect hates me
I don't think it's a question of enough people ditching Reddit, but just enough to create and/or provide quality content.
And really that doesn't matter as much as participating in a platform that's free of all the BS Reddit evolved into. Fediverse has a platform free of almost everything long term Redditors came to hate.
I suspect that I'm amongst the majority here in that I still use reddit as well as Kbin - at present the fediverse front ends just need time to introduce features to make them more usable.
I haven't used twitter since the orange criminal was let back on. The migration worked perfectly.
