Mastodon and the Fediverse: Will It Finally Happen?

Joseph Edwards VIII — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 18:55:06 GMT

I set up my own Mastodon instance. Took a few hours, including the upgrade to v4.0.2, but overall, it was worth it.

I'm not a regular blogger, and besides, this blog is supposed to be a little more technical. But, I'm also a longtime proponent of federated social network experiments, like diaspora* – none of which have ever quite achieved the network effect to gain the widespread adoption needed to go viral.

Without commenting on what, or who, is driving the migration of users from Twitter to Mastodon, I believe the moment George Takei and Jeri Ryan of Star Trek fame joined Mastodon, it had finally achieved the notoriety needed to flourish. I think it's over. A done deal.

Which means, I'm interested in the Fediverse all over again.

Mastodon, in particular, has the potential to make setting up instances turnkey easy. Whether for personal, group, institutional, or brand localization, if it's push-button easy to make your own instance, even more people will join. If upstream UI/UX adapts to user needs, as they appear they will, then it should be ever-easier.

I don't know if that will happen, and I'm nowhere near plugged-in enough to even speculate.

But you can expect me to blog more often on this topic, if it starts to catch on.

notroot (Posts about mastodon)

Mastodon and the Fediverse: Will It Finally Happen?