We all know Twitter, the free social network with almost 330 million active accounts, which allows you to post short messages with a 280-character limit. You can also attach multimedia content: videos, images, audio or gifts. This social network has a large audience and a very wide age range.
Twitter is the most up to date, its functioning allows the social network to mobilise content at high speed. One advantage is the synergy of the application itself, it is not necessary to follow a large number of users - nor is it necessary for them to follow you, in turn - because the featured publications appear on the wall every day.
This large and popular social network is in the hands of the entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk. The latest news after he became CEO of Twitter has been very controversial, with massive layoffs and the abandonment of major brands and celebrities from the social network. The change in the social network's policies has caused a stir among companies that have stopped their advertising for fear of being linked to the hate speech - for which they accuse Elon Musk.
Faced with this flight from the little blue bird, many users have logged into Mastodon. Mastodon is a free social network, which promotes microblogging. This application was founded in 2016, but has just gained a large number of users who have migrated from Twitter. This social network has reached 4.5 million accounts. Mastodon defines itself as a "decentralised, free and open source social networking platform" that can become "a viable alternative to Twitter". According to Mastodon, there were more than 70,000 new accounts on the platform, overloading the servers. The new users argue their migration because they distrust Musk, disagree with the moderation rules or significant changes made by the platform at the request of the new owners.
This social network runs on open source, which means that Mastodon's original source code is publicly available and can be distributed and modified. People can contribute to Mastodon's code by identifying and fixing bugs, adding new features and translating its interface into different languages. Anyone can create their own version of Mastodon, called a server, with rules and regulations that apply only to that version. Anyone using this version is responsible for compliance.
Compared to Twitter, which functions as a single social network, meaning that people can only create one account and share content on it, Mastodon is a federated platform, which means a set of social networks (or servers) connected to each other but owned by different people or groups. Mastodon is part of Fediverse, or Federated Universe, which is a collection of federated platforms that share a common communication protocol.
Mastodon displays posts in chronological order rather than relying on an algorithm. It also has no ads; Mastodon operates primarily through crowdfunding. Most servers are powered by the resources of the people who use them. Mastodon's hosted servers, Mastodon Social and Mastodon Online, are funded by Patreon, a membership and subscription service often used by content creators. Although Mastodon visually resembles Twitter, its user experience is more like Discord. If you want to find out what Discord is, read our blog post .
how to get started on Mastodon?
Before you get started on this social network you need to choose the instance. To do this, you first need to know which ones are available. You have the official list of Mastodon servers at this link, although you can find alternative instances that are not listed here on Internet forums and other sites. But this list is the most important and the one with the largest number of users.
You can use filters in the left column of this page to select instances, where you find two options to register: create an account or apply for an account. Ideally, you should find an instance with a focus on what you like, either because it focuses on a topic that interests you or because you want to communicate related content. Then, for example, you can talk about marketing in the local timeline of the instance and talk about everything else in the shared timeline with the user. There is also the option to go to the random instance, but you don't know for sure what you can find there. This mechanism is more similar to forums, when you register you will receive information about the rules, usage policies that generally ask for a minimum of respectful behaviour and appropriate use. Whoever manages the servers can kick users who abuse them, so in principle we can talk about a safer social network and protected against
With Mastodon you can facilitate the process of segmenting your audience. It allows you to decide for each individual post whether you want it to be visible to everyone, visible only to your followers or to send a direct message to other users. For which you must take care of a reputation on social networks, potentially under attack in each of your posts, even the most personal ones.
Social networks are constantly changing, due to the shift in demand from users. Direct and personal communication is increasingly preferred to the simple collection of likes. It is a desire for companionship that transcends the awareness that one is consumed. Hence the phenomenon of newsletters, the early days of Twitch or the success of best friend channels in places like Instagram Stories: find a specific and more personal audience.
Finally, before joining a Mastodon, read the rules of the instances carefully, as they will tell you what topics it can cover and what is allowed and what is not. In addition, you will also see data such as the number of active users before registration on the homepage of the instance, so you can find out if there are more or fewer users. If you want to start promoting yourself through this social network, you should apply your strategy to an instance with a large audience and that is related to the sector, product or service your company offers.
