[dooraven]

It still has a boatload of users and is still the cultural town square of the tech world. To build X from scratch you'd have to convince people like Marc Andreessen, Paul Graham, a bunch of other VCs etc to move.

Changing behaviour is very hard. You'd have to get people to install new apps, get use to new workflows etc and humans are creatures of habit so this is very hard.

[eropple]

> Changing behaviour is very hard. You'd have to get people to install new apps, get use to new workflows etc and humans are creatures of habit so this is very hard.

I think this is pretty optimistic thinking. "Oh no, I can't pick my way through a bunch of bigoted garbage to which the owner responds 'Concerning' or read Marc Andreesen being deeply weird or see 30,000 reply guys to Paul Graham hawking shitcoins, whatever will I do?" is, I think, probably okay at this point.

Having the thinkfluencey types before the spam and impersonation taps were turned on to full was probably valuable; now Twitter is getting the stink on it and that's hard to wash off.

Personally speaking, Bluesky picked up pretty much everybody I care to talk to and remaining on Twitter in a material capacity is a flag that I probably don't want to hear from you.

[dooraven]

You're looking at it from Musk taking over twitter, which I agree with, chasing away users is easy.

The conversation was about X being built from the ground up and attracting new users which is much harder.

BlueSky only started gaining traction after Musk started pissing people off, doubt prag would have done the same.

[eropple]

Sure but like, Twitter's userbase is now a toxic asset. Starting there seems worse than starting fresh because you can't get rid of the baggage but advertisers also don't want to spend money on them.

[meibo]

My entire tech bubble moved to mastodon and it's been great. No ads, no algorithms. Maybe the VC bubble is just stuck with it because of what it used to be?

[dooraven]

I'm curious about the composition of your tech bubble - is it programmers / technical folk mostly? cause yeah lots have moved.

The non-technical tech sphere hasn't really moved though, but maybe my circles are quite different to yours.

[orwin]

Infosec/cybersec. If you just want CVEs, automatic updates, and LinkedIn-style influencers, Twitter is still fine. If you want the stories, the how, the why, and reading humans live updates, you go to mastodon/Activitypub (bonus if you're a student: make your own activityPub reader!)

[thefreeman]

can you recommend an instance with this type of content?

[_fizz_buzz_]

Definitely a lot of electronics/EE stuff has also moved to mastodon (at least people that i was following). I follow a bigger group there than I have ever on twitter. Mastodon is still a bit quirky sometimes, but my mastodon feed is now definitely more interesting than my twitter feed.

[andreygrehov]

How do I, as an investor, make money with mastodon?

[somehnguy]

You don’t - oh well. I’m sure there is an endless number of other ways you can try to make money investing if that’s your main concern.

[rsynnott]

You... probably don't? I continue to believe that there may be some small value in a single-person-instance-as-a-service product for celebs etc (particularly if Threads goes ahead with its embrace of ActivityPub; lots of value for celebrities in having the audience but having some independence from Facebook), but it's very niche.

Not everything has to be about making money, you realise.

[bee_rider]

It seems like a hassle to re-negotiate federation each time for each celebrity. What about a general PR themed instance (strictly moderated so that everyone will peer with it).

[frameset]

Thats actually a really cool idea. The big PR agencies who rep for actors, authors, musicians etc, could run an instance and that's where the person's identity would be.

[rsynnott]

> re-negotiate federation

That's not really how it works. Federation happens ~by default in general; restriction is reactive, not proactive.

[rajamaka]

You don't, which is why it doesn't suck

[flagrant_taco]

There could be a market for one central Mastodon host with better UX that makes it easier to onboard non-tech people, but I'm not sure why making money is a pre-req here. Mastodon was never meant to be a for-profit enterprise as far as I'm aware.

[Vosporos]

Find a real job

[ncallaway]

How do you, as an investor, make money with oxygen?

But you still breathe, right?

[pessimizer]

Does anyone make money from your Mastodon use? I understand how moving to your own place could be good, hell, if you're just talking to each other you could even consider retroshare, but I don't understand the business loss when a bunch of IT professionals move their conversations to a private server.

[ke88y]

> but I don't understand the business loss when a bunch of IT professionals move their conversations to a private server.

Why pay (as much) to advertise to an empt(ier) room?

[thefreeman]

what instance did you join?

[mavhc]

Who's paying for servers, moderation, etc?

[stephen_g]

A lot of the medium to large instances use crowdfunding subscription services like Patreon, Ko-Fi etc. to cover costs.

[mavhc]

Wait, aren't we against paying to use a social media site?

[coldpie]

No, I'm a big fan of paying for what I use, and I actually do give money to a small social media site that I use. However, I'm also strongly opposed to giving money to transphobes and Republicans, so Twitter is out.

[pjc50]

Not in principle, we're just against paying to use Twitter.

(The dynamic is very different when it's voluntary and feels like supporting a community, though, and in practice it's going to be a few whales making donations)

[sanderjd]

Their audiences will move first, then either they'll move, or they won't have audiences, and will stop posting.