[daveid]

GNU social [1], Mastodon* [2]

There is a set of standartized web protocols called Webfinger, ActivityStreams, Salmon and PubSubHubbub which allow websites to interact with each other as a sort of decentralized/federated Twitter (this is called the "fediverse").

[1]: https://gnu.io/social [2]: https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon

Disclaimer: I'm working on Mastodon, it's a new open source implementation, I'm trying to make it more approachable to people who value UX and maintainability

[nenadg]

Nice thing this mastodon.social, how do I reach out to people/interests ?

[daveid]

Short answer: The sidebar has a form at the bottom where you can enter a username@domain to follow them. For that method, you have to know the user in advance, realistically atm you can browse the public timelines on quitter.se and quitter.no etc to see who interests you (or ask friends who're using the network, etc).

I'm going to eventually implement a "who to follow" suggestions section to make this process smoother.

Mentioning people in statuses works the same as in Twitter, except if it's a user on the same domain as you (e.g. mastodon.social) you can enter their @username, but if they are somewhere else, you enter @username@domain.

If you are replying to a status on your timeline, the mentions are pre-filled like you would expect from e.g. TweetDeck to save you the typing.

Edit: You can follow me as [e-mail]