I read something recently that gave me food for thought. An alternative has to be 10x better for people to switch; and the core experience is what convinces people, not cool extra features.
I don't know how universally applicable it is, but I wonder how Mastodon stacks up in that. Personally I think it's 10x better, but is it really? Or more importantly, are we communicating clearly that it is?
@Gargron "10x better" sounds like BS, to me, because you can't actually quantify relative quality like that in any sort of measurable way.
Taking the question as "enough of an improvement for people to switch", it depends a lot on two things. a) the use case of the person who might be switching, and b) how steep of a learning curve they're willing to go through to give another service a chance. (1/2)
@Gargron (2/2) Mastodon has a much steeper learning curve than other contemporary social media sites, which presents a large obstacle to switching. The only ways to get people past that obstacle are to give them sufficient motivation to keep going *before* they really get the core user experience - and the core user experience is what the "10x better" is about.
I don't think most people who could switch are getting sufficient motivation.
@InspectorCaracal Does Mastodon actually have a steeper learning curve than Snapchat though? That shit opaque af
@Gargron Yeah, it does. Snapchat, you pick up, you make an account, you take pictures, you add people. Sure, a lot of the features are weird and unintuitive but that just means most people wouldn't use all the features when they get started.
Mastodon already starts off at a disadvantage because you have to figure out how the system works before you even sign up, and since that's an inherent part of the fediverse, it needs to be done Extra Well.
@Gargron I have yet to figure out what that Extra Well would actually *be*, though, or I'd have given suggestions ages ago. 😓
@InspectorCaracal I guess one of the most important things we can do is try and make the best of the user sign-ups we do get. Let's consider the server selection to be our Great Filter. Most people who join say that content discovery is too difficult. What can be done for this?
Trends, follow recommendations, popular content leaderboards. There's uhhh opposition to all of those in the community. Idk what to do.
@InspectorCaracal Recently I was thinking how I could count when someone gets a follow from a recent account, and then add a list of most-followed-by-new-people accounts to the last screen of the onboarding screen.
Another thing that would be useful to me personally, count interactions with people you are not following, and then get recommendations to follow them, because I legit forget even if I boost someone a lot.
@gargron @InspectorCaracal Something I liked in early Google+ was Circle Sharing. People could define a list of people they followed, as do we (although it is easier to use: from a profile you can add it to a list). And then you could share the list in a post. People could click the link, view the list, and import them all into a list of their own. People would then boost the toot containing the big list and there was fast growth. I don't know why they dropped it.
