Adoption is critical for social media, and cachet is critical for mass adoption. "Tooting" isn't the radio-friendly Big Bang Theory flavor of dorky— it's Segway-with-knee-pads dorky. I'll probably deploy an instance for kicks and giggles, but I can't see it taking off until it's a little more image savvy.
Dorkiness can be an insurmountable obstacle. Just ask google glass.
When developers assume qualified UI designers merely wield arbitrary personal preferences, FOSS loses.
- it buttresses a disdain and devaluation of the design discipline, in general
- developers feel entitled to obnoxiously impose their actual arbitrary personal preferences and folk knowledge on the fruit of someone’s intellectual discipline. It’s rarely an improvement.
- designers give up on a FOSS projects in general
- Your see conjecture and debate. Anyone who knows what they’re talking about sees Dunning and Kruger.
I come here just for the bikeshedding to be honest.
Until Mastodon (or others) can seamlessly interoperate with existing social networks, they have to gain mass adoption to become useful, which means catering to what the masses think is appealing even if you don't particularly agree with that determination.
It is of course open-source software and they don't have to do anything if they're happy with the status-quo, but imagine how better if would be if you had something with the branding & adoption of Twitter and the features & benefits of Mastodon?
I'm not quite sure I agree with the point you're getting at concerning branding and mass adoption.
The EU Digital Markets Act looks like it’s designed to force some messaging interop, and it’s regulation-driven, so it can be refreshed a little more dynamically than most legislation.
Crossing fingers for some movement on the interop front!
We're also all missing the bigger problem here, which is that "mast" is rooted in the word for "breast". ( /s for the concern, but it in fact is)
But maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's why it's as successful as it is.
FOSSy vs corporate is a false dichotomy. The FOSSy “don’t you dare criticize my logo… I spent a weekend learning Gimp to make it… and yes the G stands for Gnu” aesthetic says “tech-savvy only”. It is off-putting for many, and FAR MORE EXCLUSIVE than any sane corporate design, save luxury brands. It doesn’t signify the lack of an in-club— it is an in-club.
I still hear toot used to distinguish from tweets, is there a new word suggested? The wikipedia on Mastadon states, 'Posts are called "toots" instead of "tweets", as is the case on Twitter' based on a 2017 article from the Verge so maybe someone should update it.
Mastodons are cool and everything but they don't work for branding a social network. Some rad groundbreaking online museum or library or something else that wanted to viscerally communicate age and wisdom and weight and timelessness? Sure.
I get that many developers had/have a toxic experience with the concept of coolness, but that doesn’t negate its functionality in this vein.
You're right about "toots," though. At least "tweets" make sense for a site named Twitter, but what is a "toot," a mastodon farting?
For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZUvuvfDQg
It's also old slang for a drinking bender:
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/on+a+toot
Mastadon really should have done a little more due dilligence before deciding on that term.
Even ignoring that, the word "tweet" viscerally feels light, nimble, quick, and sharp. Toot feels heavier, duller, and more imposing. To end users, the interface is the software and no amount of technical or logistical impressiveness will overcome something being viscerally off-putting. It needs to become attractive in spite of that.
It did, until Twitter spoiled that. Hearing 'tweet' I somehow get associations with 'trump' (also slang for fart in British English, btw) and 'musk' (a strong odor).
[EDIT] nb I don't use Mastodon and don't expect it to take off, but I don't think "toot" is at all the reason for that.
Adoption is really important for social media to succeed and be useful to its users and image is really important for social media adoption, generally, even if not for you. But I guarantee its influenced your choices more than you could feasibly perceive. Would you still use HN if it used the default bootstrap layouts? Or a ton of slick graphics and heavy animations? Would enough other people be put off by it not to bother?
You can't guarantee everything will strike everyone the same way, but there are wrong answers and it's not even mostly subjective. In an alternate Twitter-free universe if someone wanted a noun/verb for a deliberately lightweight communication broadcast into the ether over the internet, I'd bank a grand on marketers agreeing that a cheerful, sharp little chirp from a nimble, energetic bird communicates that better than the plaintive sounding crescendo of a giant plodding extinct earthbound mammal which also is outdated slang for a fart.
Nobody user is out there weight the pros and cons of the post name when deciding a social network— it's all about that first visceral impression that makes people think "this is cool and exciting" or "this is dull and lame."
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(hopefully anticipating a "trunk raised, toot blasting" ascii art response worthy of the thread)
While that's not the true meaning behind it, "a mastodon farting" is a good summary for the branding around all these "fediverse" social networks.
I think that privacy should be a greater public concern, but I doubt it was the reason why Google Glass failed to catch on.
There's something viscerally more creepy about having a camera pointed directly in your face at all times. Try holding your cellphone up to random people at about eye level, you'll see that people do in fact find that at least annoying.
>I think that privacy should be a greater public concern, but I doubt it was the reason why Google Glass failed to catch on.
As I recall, it was the only thing people were talking about.
(Also it was very expensive, clunky looking, and buggy. As you say, it's multifaceted.)
You're technically correct. Using Gmail, Drive, Chrome, etc., does place a small burden on those you interact with (when they email you, when you store group project files, etc.)
But there's a whole other level of intrusiveness when you're roaming meatspace with a Google Camera in everyone's face.
Oh, and it's dorky as hell. Glass failed on multiple fronts. For the reasons you listed as well as the parent comment.
Dorkiness does not legitimately enter into discussing "Toots" no matter Mastodon's intent.
That's all nice for when on a startup, scaleup, unicorn, megasaurus adventure, but not what this is really about. At least not yet, and I hope it stays that way.
This is about free software projects in a hard-to-monetize decentralized (federated) environment, where a different culture currently thrives. One where all these incentives that made other social media such bad places, are not very prevalent yet (and to some extent can be controlled by moderation mechanisms). The "move fast and break things" growth hacking mindset, if that wins out, will likely destroy this culture. 'Hard-to-monetize' is an advantage in my book, in this regard.
I agree. It is an issue of cultural acceptance. And rest assured, you don't need to educate me about FOSS scene culture— I've been using linux consistently since the 90s and have worked full time developing for FOSS projects for 12 years. The important realization you skipped past was the exclusivity of culture.
Just like Punk cultures, FOSS culture often mistakes itself for an inclusive catch-all for people opposed to a corporate for-profit status quo. Though obviously opposed to corporate status quo, the FOSS scene is an in-club of people who put technical accomplishment above all else. They pride themselves on rejecting user-focus and pushing through awful user experiences. There are cool kids and villains and the look and feel of your projects is the same as subculture fashion.
I can't imagine Mastodon intended to restrict their audience to that 'different culture' but ignoring their perspective certainly had that effect. Eschewing or appealing to people outside of that culture has absolutely nothing to do with profit. None.