Posted a new message to our internal Basecamp with the title “Twitter implosion marketing” to brainstorm how to get the word out. Happy to hear ideas from the community too! If you like Micro.blog, let’s figure out how to tell people how it fits into the post-Twitter world.
@manton I am going to make a youttube video with that title. Since I do not have other social to blast ! - and I might post something on LinkedIN ... The power of personal website should not be under estimated.
I think about the # of "twitter threads" that should have been blog posts - and had a perm place on the web....
@terrygrier Cool, thank you! Yeah, all those Twitter threads that should be blog posts... Hard to find or read again. 🙁
@manton I’d play up the features that make Micro.blog unlike Twitter! People moving to Mastadon seem to be pleasantly surprised by the features designed in reaction to the worst aspects of Twitter, yet Mastodon is still quite similar, and thus doomed to the same fate at scale?
@manton I would focus on the cross posting abilities. That by itself is very cool.
A tool I would love to see but don't have time to write is "norms based posting" and what I mean is you can set a config for different communities and it formats the post, to the best of its abilities, to the norms of other social media sites.
@manton Micro.blog is slower paced, quieter and thus less demanding on one’s attention. It’s not about chasing likes or followers, or posting quick takes. These are unique strengths, and I’d be tempted to grow the platform by attracting people who like the sound of all that.
@paulrobertlloyd Agree 100%. I do like the idea of Mastodon, but it still has the worst features that basically just doomed society haha (boosts/retweets, likes/favs, follower counts etc etc).
@vincent @paulrobertlloyd Usually I'd agree — maybe not so much with the doom but on some days yeah lol — but it seems to be that the structure of federated systems (self-servers are just like having your own blog, for example) makes it difficult for those features to create bad incentives.
Also, two other things help to disincentivise the bad things: no algorithm + open source. Without addiction-based capturing of attention as a business model there aren't many motivations to encourage the worst behaviour, if any at all.
@vincent Reading more about how ActivityPub works, and the computation needed across servers to make federation work, also has me concerned. Doesn’t seem great for the environment 😬
@manton Maybe focus on the similarities with Twitter? Just sign-up and get going: no finding a server or configuring anything.
I’ve found a mix of responses on Twitter to Mastodon: there’s quite a lot of “I cannot be arsed with that”. I like Mastodon, but it does steer me down the route of finding something I’m interested in, rather than just somewhere to post stuff easily and follow people.
@SimonWoods True this. Although I still think the idea of "retweets" and "liking" could be... addictive. However, yes, 100% onboard with tthe algorithm and also lack of ads and all that crap.
@manton This all sounds really good. Other than what I already recently suggested, I think doing two things might have good impact:
Explicitly allow free registrations with a BYOB onboarding flow that caters to all users.
Show the “Follow” button on Micro.blog profiles for logged out users, which is basically most people. This lets people sign up using point 1 to easily follow someone they came across while also removing confusion about the same.
Of course, do market the unique strengths of hosted blogs here wherever relevant. But my point is that the community in itself is a great feature of Micro.blog, and it’s literally free for anyone, so we should leverage that.
I really hope I’m not annoying lately. 😬
@paulrobertlloyd Probably way less than most big tech companies use for computational power 😜 I think a lot of technology is a black hole and no-one ever talks about the energy use of say "running Twitter", "running traffic lights", "running Air Traffic Control". Probably big spenders. 🙃
@vincent Yes, entirely agreed about the danger. Mastodon isn't for me, personally, since I match the Micro.blog model so well. Also thankful that so many non-silo, non-corporate options are gaining momentum.
I've seen people making comments about the differences and essentially understanding the rotten parts of the silos for the first time; finally this is happening in greater numbers.
I totally forgot about the lack of ads, which is hilarious. Life here on Micro.blog has reset my expectations to the pre-silo days.
@uncertainquark I wouldn't worry about being annoying at all! Manton has stated more than once that repeated feature requests are the primary method for giving such feedback, so you're just doing as the developer said.
@terrygrier Many of the people I've followed for two decades on listservs, blogs, and social networks understand the elegance of a presence such as MB. They respect reading lists and would enjoy the bookshelves that a MB account offers. I reckon they would appreciate MB's Discovery tool. And they would respect the active community monitoring that happens here, thanks to @jean and crew.
@manton ... "checks Basecamp" 😅
I can barely keep up with the flood of new people, though it's a pleasure to try. 💁♀️ I think there will also be a second wave after this tsunami, when some people become disenchanted with Mastodon. They will be able to appreciate that Micro.blog offers something fundamentally different from either Twitter or Mastodon. Emphasizing the community commitment we have had from the beginning is still important.
@manton What does it say about me and the world, that I immediately thought "Create a bunch of fake twitter accounts saying 'I left for micro.blog'?"
@manton I think it would be great to make the Basics option clear on that front page. The "Starting at $5/month" language overlooks the option to pipe in a feed from elsewhere and have access to the community even without hosting. The use case I'm considering is academics with university-hosted blogging software.
@manton I read this and it made me think, and I hope this is not painfully obvious to everyone but me, of how the literary (or whichever) Twitter community has, in some ways, created an almost Micro.blog feel in terms of how they interact with each other. Not that all the other stuff isn't there, but when I drill down to the kinds of conversations that go on, they are not so disimilar in form--I mean of the conversation itself, not the form imposed by the platform--and even style to the conversations here on MB. I get the same feeling when I think of Jewish Twitter (Jwitter to some). I'm kind of in the middle of other work and don't have time to develop this thought further right now, but I wanted to drop this in here before the impulse got lost among all the other things I have to do today.
@jean Anytime, I'll try and provide more as I keep using it. Curious though: is there no Windows app like there is for Mac? I use iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux - basically everything under the sun and usually prefer native apps if I can get them. Random curiosity. :)
@manton Focus on the things that Twitter and Mastodon have but MB doesn't and in 4-5 words why it is so. Why no public following-followers? Why no retweet/Quotetweet? Get at the heart of aiming for inner satisfaction rather than external validation. Aim for permanence rather than the fleeting nature of the tweet.
Contrast "the $8" with $5 but with your own domain name, custom design, etc. But hint at the free tier as @uncertainquark and @KimberlyHirsh mentioned.
Make the community a primary feature. Sell niceness here as 'Ted Lasso in social-media form' #Believe Sell the ability to speak your mind without being a dick about it.
@manton I returned to both twitter and micro.blog after a multi-year absence from both. Entirely by coincidence, this was just a few weeks before the “muskover” of twitter. But before that happened, I’d already decided to drop twitter permanently and stick with mB, based solely on one metric: how they made me feel. As a copy writer, if I were writing a tagline for mB it would be, “Social media you can feel good about.” The features are great, but those are second-tier selling points. First tier is emotional — I feel better about myself and the world on mB.
@Annie Perfect. Reminds me of the Maya Angelou quote:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
The Feel-Good Social Network. I seem to lean toward network/community instead of media. The latter sounds too business-y.
@samleegray No Windows app. There is a great app for iOS and Android called @gluon by @vincent, who also works with us on the official apps. We encourage third-party developers. 😇
@samleegray Just following up to @jean. I actually always recommend that you save the webpage as an "app" using Microsoft Edge on Windows. Not perfect, but works a treat. A lot of the views in the native MB apps are hybrid, so we actually render a special page from the website anyway. As time goes, I am hoping we improve this.
@Annie Yes, this is really the way to get people to try something. I also know we can do better with orienting people on the how and why.
@pratik I love “Ted Lasso in social media form.” You are on a roll with crafting marketing copy I will steal, Pratik.
@jean for sure, and I 100% love the consistent effort toward great community and clear communication about what/how/why of micro.blog.
@manton Something that sets Micro.blog apart is how much “quieter” it is when coming from places like Twitter or even some Mastodon instances. I’ve frequently seen new people initially think that they are doing something wrong because of the lack of algorithmic feeds and instant gratification tools like hashtags, stars, likes, etc. In all of those cases, actual humans come by to welcome and assure them that they can be curious and, essentially, explore the neighborhood. It’s social at the speed of human.
@pratik Can I pay you in orange check marks? Shhh, don't tell anyone about our latest revenue scheme!
@manton I went looking for some micro.blog logos on your site today and couldn't find them. Can I suggest you create a "press kit" making it easy for people to download promo assets and get a basic outline of the service?
@jean haha! We do the pins that we give away for free. Well, you have to blog first. Makes me wonder why someone hasn’t figured out a way to display them on their blog/profile.
@manton one thing I’ve been enjoying is this is “the easy, humane way to Mastodon” — I’m not sure pitching it as a blog will be the right thing, if you’re targeting people fleeing Twitter. They can discover the joys of blogs again once they’re in the door.
@manton I've been rolling this discussion over in my head and the reason Micro.blog works for me is how much it isn't other services. The point of Micro.blog can’t possibly be just to offer a “better” Twitter or tool for Mastodon. Micro.blog is a place where "users" became people again, and where people have a sense of ownership over themselves through their blog. (No matter how uncool the term "blog" has become.)
@gregmoore Thanks. Yeah, I think we always need to keep in mind that the goal was never to recreate Twitter exactly. As Mastodon becomes more popular, I'm not swayed to add features that we left out on purpose.
@manton I think Micro.blog is basically one's personal Twitter AND Instagram by this point. To be honest, I don't think Twitter will die, nor I think that IndieWeb in its current form will even be mainstream or at least popular enough, but I definitely believe Micro.blog is better than Mastodon for anyone truly wanting to leave – shared the same thought with my followers.
Mastodon is curious, but you're either paying for your own instance (might as well pay for Micro.blog) or relying on someone else to pay for you for some reason, while giving them complete control over you data with no oversight expected for a company millions of people are watching.
