Going to try and follow a few mastodon folks from my micro.blog account to see how it works.

@baldur how? Where?

@kaa Meant to say that I’m going to try micro.blog’s mastodon features by following a bunch of folks from this account.

@baldur Ah I see...I'm still not sure about how to do that tbh. I've got my mastadon username in @khaled now what? I go to discover and never see any mastadon users. Nobody in my timeline has followed or is interacting with any mastadon users. If I go to Mastadon, it asks me to register....but I already have a user name. From @manton's recent discussions (podcasts/posts) I should be seeing some activity right? I see nothing at the moment...

@kaa There are at least two people from Mastodon in the books filter. There's also a good chance you'll see some folks on the profile pages for Manton and Jean.

I'm hoping there will be some sort of Mastodon filter from the team, as well as some links from the community; "latest from Micro.Mastodon!" or something, just to get things going. I think over time this will be easier.

@simonwoods I am being pretty intentional about choosing who I follow from Mastodon here.

@kaa My guess is that things are still in progress. I'm lucky in that I've had a Mastodon account for a while so I've already got a list of users to follow.

@kaa Did you set up your Mastodon-compatible username under Account settings on the web version of Micro.blog?

You can cross-post to your current Mastodon account just like you can to Twitter. But if you want to follow and reply while using the Micro.blog apps, you have to set up a Mastodon-compatible username and search using Micro.blog's Discover tools for Mastodon users to follow. You aren't setting up a Mastodon account when you do this, just an Activity Pub compatible username for Mastodon.

I'm using @jean@micro.welltempered.net for that, but I'm still Mastodon user @jean for now, while I figure out the best strategy.

Clear as mud? 🤔 I am working on an explainer, once I've explained it to myself!

@macgenie Was with you most of the way. So I've created a Mastodon-compatible username from within the Micro.blog account page. I can't use that to actually log into Mastodon. So I would need to create a new account on Mastadon (a sacrificial one?) and then based on this that will allow me to find users to follow, which I can do via the Discover tab (by searching for those user).

I guess it's still early days...so I'll just ignore it for now until maybe I start seeing more Mastodon users pop up in people's conversations and posts. Just felt like I was missing out on a whole bunch of stuff and was missing something easy/fundamental.

@kaa You don't create a Mastodon account for this. Just a user name that integrates with Mastodon.

In Discover (either on the web or in the iOS app), you choose the Search tool and enter a name or partial name of the Mastodon user you want to follow.

(I appreciate you taking the time to help me figure out how to help people with this!)

@macgenie

... enter a name or partial name of the Mastodon user you want to follow

Ok I think I've worked it out. So you're completely right. No need to and create your account. What you do want to do however is go to https://joinmastodon.org/, then scroll all the way to the browse communities section. Use the filter for what you might be interested and then follow some of the guys/gals that strike a cord :).

@macgenie do I need to have the upgraded microblog-plan for this or is the cross-posting account enough?

@nielsk Hmmm. That's an @manton question.

@kaa Right! Making a note to add this to my Mastodon guide.

@nielsk You need a custom domain on your account, which means you need a hosted Micro.blog plan, yep. // @macgenie

@macgenie @kaa That's definitely the way to actively seek out lots of people on Mastodon right now. I do, however, think there is value on waiting to see such people appear on Micro.blog which is my approach; in this way I don't feel overwhelmed nor do I feel like I'm completing a cumbersome task as part of being on Micro.blog. So, both ways work.

@jgmac1106 Yes, I'm the same with Micro.blog and it has worked out so well that I am now replicating that anywhere else I can subscribe to people.

@simonwoods after looking at the lists I’ve got to agree with you...looks like a TON of noise....

@raretrack Do you have a link for where your posts should appear on Mastodon? I have yet to get a Mastodon account for testing but I'll get one to help if we can't figure this out immediately. :)

@raretrack Hmmm, interesting. Manton recently posted an update so there might be more of a change to it. I think this is very much a set of features that will improve gradually over time, since it was difficult to test before launch. Hopefully the big improvements happen quickly.