Great for the fediverse but also weird reason to jump ship. All the other bullshit was fine, but "whoa they changed the logo now I'm out"?
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A lot of people stay because of lingering attachment to the platform. As weird as it is, changing the branding subconsciously tells the human brain "This is a new platform" and that makes switching mentally easier.
You've been considering leaving Twitter for a while, and suddenly one morning the bird has flown and Twitter has left you instead.
I think it's also a clear signal that things are really never going to return to normal, it's only getting worse from here. Which is easy those of us on the outside to observe, but maybe slightly harder from the inside when you still have most of the community still intact and posting.
I think some of us also had hopes that the new CEO would put a leash on Musk and steer Twitter into calmer waters again, but this was just proof that Musk is still doing wtf he wants and the CEO is just there for show. So people have now abandoned their last bit of hope and therefore abandoned T...I mean X as well.
While I haven't been an active user in a longer time, I've still been a very active lurker until Musk took over. By now, I've only checked Twitter every now and then when bored, to see what happened (as I mostly used Twitter as some kind of news feeds for stuff I couldn't easily follow in any other way). But today I started migrating off completely - going through my follow list one by one and finding ways to follow those things (like local police, local town, local zoo, etc.) in other ways.
For some that means slower news, or only the most important news - which kinda sucks, as e.g. local police info were good to have in real time during major events or when there was some protest going on. For some this even means mailing lists, ugh.
And a few I couldn't replace at all, so I'll miss out on those news. Sucks, but hopefully those people/entities will provide their news feed through some better means sometime now.
the CEO is just there for show
The CEO is there to fail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
I think it’s spot on. It’s people who were already going through the stages of grief, were kinda stuck in “bargaining” (like: “nah, Twitter is not really dead, it’ll come back”), and the symbolism there about Twitter really being gone-gone fast-tracked them to depression/acceptance.
The stages of grief don't have to go in that order. People can be angry at Twitter and then jump to acceptance that its never going back. No fast tracking needed.
When spez doubled down and Reddit imploded i moved to lemmy. I also discovered mastodon. But then i realized the reason i used twitter was to follow certain people/accounts none of which are on mastodon.
We had a reason to ditch Reddit, because they forced everyone off our beloved third party apps. But twitter didn't have this kind of meltdown. Im only a consumer on Twitter, and its still working fine. No reason to quit. The rate limit is dumb but it isn't the end of the world.
Elon rate limits tweets
i sleep
Elon changes the logo
real shit??
I've already had several non-tech people say something along the lines of "What the heck is this X thing on my phone?"
I gotta wonder how many other people are just impulse uninstalling something they don't recognize off their phone as well, since ol' Musky boi did this with basically zero user notice as well.
I had a similar thought. Non-techies are going to open up Twitter and see a different logo but it the text still says Twitter and think they're on a phishing site.
The blue bird was the last thing they had left
I think a good amount of it is also "the straw that broke the camel's back." Twitter users have been taking abuse after abuse. Like many others have stated, they use Twitter to follow specific people. If those people aren't on other platforms, then they're going to stay. But after a certain point, the cost becomes too high. Now the platform is rebranded and now it looks as alien as it's begun to feel. I think that's why so many are once again leaving. Before they could just ignore everything else going on and try to move on with their day. Not there's a big, fat X reminding them of how much they're starting to/already hate the platform now.
Renaming Twitter to 𝕏 is probably the straw that break the camel's back to those people.
I'd like to think it's people finally realizing "Holy shit he IS an idiot" but that might be too optimistic
Mastodon has become super stable. It is the place to go.
Absolutely - though some people find it too bare bones. It's designed to be a bit of an anti-Twitter, after all.
Those looking for something more flashy might be interested in checking out, for example, Firefish. The Firefish site also includes a neat "Fediverse software comparison", which lists popular federated services and some of the features they currently have. Personally I prefer the stripped down approach of Mastodon, but reasonable people might disagree. :)
Oh, and there's also elk.zone, an online user interface for Mastodon that behaves a lot like Twitter. Similar to those "old lemmy" sites (like old.lemmy.world) in a way, but as an online app similar to wefwef.app.
It amazes me how badly these billionares are at running businesses.
Like im an engineer and Not in my wildest dreams could I have destoyed a company like Twitter faster than musk.
Like Did he do it on purpose?
It HAS to be on purpose. Nobody can get to billionaire levels of wealth and be completely inept, right? RIGHT?
Begin rich makes one feel infallible. Thinking one's self to be infallible leads to these kinds of decisions.
Unfortunately, once you get enough money the system is designed to keep you wealthy no matter how much you fuck up.
Like, Trump has had multiple failed companies including casinos thay failed because he had them competeing with each other.
Yet while he's probably not a billionaire he still has the status of "wealthy" and managed to fail into the most powerful position in government.
Musk had more money, and therefore can fuck up way harder and still be fine. He could burn Twitter to the ground for all the effect it would have on him.
The other stuff didn't bother people enough to leave, but rebranding? That's the step too far. Anyway Mastodon usage has fluctuated a good amount over the last few months so I don't think that's a good metric for people fleeing Twitter, or should I say X (what a terrible name).
Twitter's value was in its branding as the case with any ubiquitous product. There was zero reason to change it other than to further damage the entity. Fine with me Elon, go ahead and kill it, one more failed corporate driven media site. We don't need any of them.
Could be the straw that broke the camel's back.
I actually hate rebranding by itself too. I see a totally new name as just trying to escape their bad name, likely earned by their previous misdeeds.
I'd take that with many grains of salt, brands and influencers aren't moving and neither are their followers
That's not terribly surprising, given that both of those groups rely most heavily on network effects: the very point of such accounts requires being where their audience is, especially brands. Those kinds of accounts will move en masse only when most everyone else has already done so
Also, we do have some influencers here - namely a few Linux youtubers, and technology connections. Basically it's those that you would somewhat expect to have a presence on a budding social network like mastodon.
I see George Takei and Neil Gaiman post on there :)
Hopefully this means there are accounts on Mastodon actually worth interacting with. Like 99.9999% of posts on Mastodon are literally just about Mastodon, or stupid tech shit I don't care about.
Use the hashtag and follow people you find interesting. Your feed will improve as you curate it to your liking. It’s on you. There is no algorithm feeding you.
This is a good thing! Corporate social media is a bad thing.
You always get a boost when Elon does something stupid but I'm not seeing anything unusual about this one.. 'soaring' is relative. Usual is 500-1000 an hour and we're currently at 1500.
https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110774139508082609
Oh shit, here we go again!
What was Musk's logic? Was there any? It's like he ruined the reputation of Twitter and decided to try a restart under a new name but it's predictably failing.
The perfect plan
step 1: spend billions buying an extremely recognizable brand
step 2: rebrand it
I actually can't believe he is going forward with this. Twitter achieved the goal of becoming a verb, "tweeting". Companies kill for that, and he's just throwing it away? all the mindshare and recognition? for what?