I've been using Ivory for a couple of weeks now, and I think it's significantly better than the official Mastodon iOS app. For a great web client, I can recommend Elk (https://elk.zone).
The official client is alright. It makes some major Mastodon features (like the local timeline where people on your instance hang out) hard to access, which means I can’t recommend.
Their priority right now is the iOS client, still in beta. They'd expected to make it available in the App Store this month, though that was before Twitter blocked Tweetbot.
“Almost 24 hours later and still no official/unofficial info from inside Twitter. I'm going to continue as if this was all done on purpose.
What now? Ivory goes into hyper mode with just the absolute minimum 3-4 things that have to be done finished up and then off to Apple. Probably going to be a bunch of things I'm not super happy with but I guess we'll fix it in post.
Hopefully everyone knows what we're capable of and can live with some, hopefully not long lived, rough edges/missing features.”
In other words, they’re all in on Mastodon. I think that’s the right move. Twitter’s relationship with 3rd party client authors has been antagonistic at best for the last decade, so moving to a growing platform that’s rooted in open standards has to be hugely attractive.
For anyone interested in a really nice Mac client for Mastodon, the best one I've found so far is this specific fork of Mastonaut https://github.com/chucker/Mastonaut (the original is unmaintained).
They've been publishing TestFlight betas, 1000 at a time, maybe once a week or so for the last month or two. The batches last for less than 5 minutes before they're all snatched up. That's a positive sign for Tapbots, but also for Mastodon.
I've been using Tweetbot exclusively for several years. I've been hearing about Mastodon for a while on HN, especially surrounding the recent Twitter drama, but have never looked at it. Not even searching more on what it's about or how it's different from Twitter (again, other than what context I gain from HN discussions).
After the Twitter API shutdown (I'm heavily suspecting it's intentional/permanent), I blindly downloaded the Mastodon app. The homescreen has two buttons: Create Account and Log In.
I click Create Account and I'm presented with a list of servers that I can filter by interest. I'm thinking "I don't want to join a server, just let me create an account and start following feeds."
I imagine it's like Discord (maybe?), where you actually join a community of other users based on an interest. But if so, the current list of Mastodon servers feels very limited (i.e. no US-based regional servers, no "interest" server that interests me) -- so what do I do? I'm assuming I can just arbitrarily join a random server, but that just feels completely unintuitive.
I just closed it, and will wait to see how the Twitter drama unfolds.
Needless to say, if Mastodon is looking to replace Twitter (maybe they're not?), they need a better, more frictionless way to onboard new users. I'm sure I could spend 5 minutes online to figure out what the point of joining a server is, and how to decide which one to join. But I shouldn't need to.
It's like email. When you create an email account, you also choose a provider like Gmail or Yahoo. With Mastodon, you choose a server. You can follow and be followed by anyone regardless of which server they're on. Just like you can email a Yahoo user from your Gmail email account.
There are two main criteria why you should prefer one Mastodon server over another:
1) You are looking for a niche community, and Mastodon offers a "local" feed of all the users on a server, so this is helpful to discover new accounts to follow in your niche interest
2) And / or you care about privacy, trust etc. and want an organization that hosts the server that you can trust.
But it's easy to switch from one server to another without losing followers or followees, so compared to email, much simpler. So, you can't really choose a "wrong server".
Now, I can understand why this can be confusing for people who are only used to centralized social media platforms. In the end, it's just something new for a lot of folks, but it's not a complicated or difficult concept to grasp.
Most instances may have an emphasis on an interest or affiliation but that doesn't mean most people are on such instances or pay it much mind. Most instances are quite small. The largest instances tend to be generic.
And people do mildly judge others based on email providers.
I see your point and identify with the frustration, but at the end of the day that's kind of the entire point of Mastodon and the main distinction that makes it stand out from Twitter. It's decentralized. There is no one server, and there can never be a complete and up to date list of all servers. Discord isn't a perfect comparison because even though they separate communities and sign-ups, it's still all hosted and operated by Discord.
The most frictionless way to join Mastodon is when a friend or group of friends invites you personally to theirs, or if you discover a community online that really jives with you and you want to join.
Some users are doing that for those reasons, sure. But a decentralized app doesn't need to measure it's relevance or success by user base unless it's part of the design goal. Twitter is a business, so of course its success is tied to popularity and user engagement. Decentralized apps' value proposition is that it gives you control over your data, no opaque feed algorithm, no corporate censorship, etc.
Why does Mastadon need to attract Twitter users? All it needs to do is exist for the types of people who value the difference.
Mastodon doesn’t need to do anything. But a mastodon that deserves the attention it gets in the Twitter turmoil is one that can - and actively tries - to be that Twitter alternative.
If it doesn’t do that in a hurry now, then it’s still a good project it’s just not one that will be worth any broad attention because it’s so small and niche.
It's more like email or irc. You downloaded a client, but you need a server to make your account on. Servers can come and go. If twitter or discord brings down their service, discord servers stop existing and the client stops working. If a mastodon instance stops existing, you can use the same client and connect to a different one. It's my understanding that currently your account and data will be lost in that case.
It's not a Twitter replacement, it's a Twitter alternative. It's actually not necessary or desirable that every platform has to "win" and replace all other similar platforms, this is the thinking that gave us giant privacy-destroying monoliths in the first place. People that are satisfied with their Twitter experience should definitely stay there, Mastodon really won't work for them.
It helped me find some instances that matched my interests. Just keep in mind, most instances will die out if they're not sufficiently funded either by donations or the pocket money of the owners. This is why I treat all my Mastodon accounts as potentially ephemeral accounts that will die out given enough time. The more popular instances seem to be in it for the long haul, so go with those (as much as you enjoy the smaller instances).
Sadly Mastodon doesn't want to be twitter and it's not actually something I'm personally interested in in it's current form. I'm still hoping t2.social turns into something big. Despite people wanting a twitter alternative, Mastodon is not it and will remain a niche toy for a subset of the tech crowd.
>Needless to say, if Mastodon is looking to replace Twitter (maybe they're not?), they need a better, more frictionless way to onboard new users.
Pretty sure Mastodon will never replace Twitter. It's just too different, can't attract users who want to know what's happening outside their social circle, and probably can't attract any brands either.
