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Tipping points
2022-Nov-05, Saturday 12:54 amWarning; this is not a project post.
This is a post prompted by the dumpster fire that twitter is becoming. But it's not about twitter. It's about what formerly 'Irish Twitter' is doing in response. @mastodon.ie was set up a few years ago, and a couple of weeks ago it had a respectable 500 users. The mods have called it a day, with just short of 2,000 users. Over 1,000 users signed up today. With pending applications waiting until morning.
I'm chilling over on @chaos.social. Which has 9.68K users. And was set up two years before @mastodon.ie. I wanted a larger instance after several of the previous, smaller, ones I was on all disappeared. I was looking for longevity, so mods that that perform their role professionally, and rules that I am aligned with. They have two mods.
@mastodon.ie just on-boarded their fourth mod to help with this explosive growth. Obviously the growth is not sustainable, and it will be interesting to see how they handle things in the short-term. The growth has largely been driven by the take-over at twitter. (I, in vain, have been trying to tempt people over, for years.) And it's not a typical instance, centred on interests. It seems to claim the entirety of Irish identity. (The instance isn't *for* Irish people, all are welcome, but it's membership is heavily weighted in that direction.) It's like 'Irish Twitter' en-masse decided to hit up a different pub. Very few have gravitated towards interest centred instances. They jumped, quickly, to something that seemed familiar.
What is the instance like? It's culturally self-referential (with multiple jokes about having the server ready for its big test, The Late Late Toy Show in three weeks). It is saturated with Irish humour. And I think this is an interesting point. In many instances I think this behaviour wouldn't be understood? Or would be seen to be more aggressive than it actually is? It's certainly not the gently-gently I've seen on most of the non-blocked instances. I guess it helps that most of them know each other already, at least from twitter. It's like some kind of last day at school, combined with first day of school energy.
Another interesting thing, is that the instance has already begun attracting journalists, and elected politicians. As well as satirists and comedians. People still on twitter are saying that 'Irish Twitter' won't give up the chance to make fun of their politicians to their faces, like they do on twitter. But if the politicians are setting up too, well then. Some EU organisation has even set up their own instance, for official comms. It's becoming a weirdly centralised, albeit niche, decentralised part of the fediverse.
The part it's not good at, is the promotion and sales of goods and services. Authors, artists, companies, they can reach a following they already have, but reaching a new one? The fediverse isn't built that way.
I'm going to be very interested to see how it fares long-term.
This is a post prompted by the dumpster fire that twitter is becoming. But it's not about twitter. It's about what formerly 'Irish Twitter' is doing in response. @mastodon.ie was set up a few years ago, and a couple of weeks ago it had a respectable 500 users. The mods have called it a day, with just short of 2,000 users. Over 1,000 users signed up today. With pending applications waiting until morning.
I'm chilling over on @chaos.social. Which has 9.68K users. And was set up two years before @mastodon.ie. I wanted a larger instance after several of the previous, smaller, ones I was on all disappeared. I was looking for longevity, so mods that that perform their role professionally, and rules that I am aligned with. They have two mods.
@mastodon.ie just on-boarded their fourth mod to help with this explosive growth. Obviously the growth is not sustainable, and it will be interesting to see how they handle things in the short-term. The growth has largely been driven by the take-over at twitter. (I, in vain, have been trying to tempt people over, for years.) And it's not a typical instance, centred on interests. It seems to claim the entirety of Irish identity. (The instance isn't *for* Irish people, all are welcome, but it's membership is heavily weighted in that direction.) It's like 'Irish Twitter' en-masse decided to hit up a different pub. Very few have gravitated towards interest centred instances. They jumped, quickly, to something that seemed familiar.
What is the instance like? It's culturally self-referential (with multiple jokes about having the server ready for its big test, The Late Late Toy Show in three weeks). It is saturated with Irish humour. And I think this is an interesting point. In many instances I think this behaviour wouldn't be understood? Or would be seen to be more aggressive than it actually is? It's certainly not the gently-gently I've seen on most of the non-blocked instances. I guess it helps that most of them know each other already, at least from twitter. It's like some kind of last day at school, combined with first day of school energy.
Another interesting thing, is that the instance has already begun attracting journalists, and elected politicians. As well as satirists and comedians. People still on twitter are saying that 'Irish Twitter' won't give up the chance to make fun of their politicians to their faces, like they do on twitter. But if the politicians are setting up too, well then. Some EU organisation has even set up their own instance, for official comms. It's becoming a weirdly centralised, albeit niche, decentralised part of the fediverse.
The part it's not good at, is the promotion and sales of goods and services. Authors, artists, companies, they can reach a following they already have, but reaching a new one? The fediverse isn't built that way.
I'm going to be very interested to see how it fares long-term.
