Op-ed: Why the great #TwitterMigration didn’t quite pan out

creedda@kbin.social to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 25 points – Op-ed: Why the great #TwitterMigration didn’t quite pan out
arstechnica.com

Things to think about and lessons to learn.

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Twitter as a social media discussion platform is trash. Mastodon suffers from the same issue. The reality is those kinda of platforms rely on central figures (ie. Celebrities) to form interest.

A forum-like experience (ie. Reddit) is more reliant on community and discussion. So platforms like Kbin and Lemmy have a much better chance of gaining more traction.

Twitter‘s real world relevance is highly overvalued. Journalists who practically live there instead of doing journalist stuff elevating its cultural impact manifold. Mastodon shows how much of this impact is lost, if there aren’t enough promoters. The grassroots picture Twitter painted of itself wasn’t ever close to true, it was just a single-way microphone for narcissists. Reddit‘s cultural value is highly underrated in comparison and I believe a good alternative can catch enough nexus posters who will keep good content coming. As with every FOSS project the biggest enemies of success are the people within. Lemmy (as Mastodon) has a lot of difficulties with fracturing due to its federated nature and the differentiation between kbin and Lemmy is already divisive for the community. I hope the more technical minded audience of Reddit is able to overcome these barriers for entry and find a new home here.

Yep, journalists: I don’t need sources I have Twitter links!

Underrated reply. Twitter is definitely a place where a bunch of people follow a small group of famous people and content creators almost like lemmings. (The irony that lemmy isn't like despite users being called lemmings isn't lost on me)

Mastodon is a bit better, but also strangely seems to be focused on big names and groups as well, just different ones and to a lesser extent. It's one of the reasons I spend less time on there and more on Kbin / Lemmy.

On the positive side, it's from Mastodon that I learned about Kbin and Lemmy to begin with.