As Twitter ditches its iconic branding in favor of owner Elon Musk's favorite letter "X," its open source competitor Mastodon is once again seeing usage numbers soar.

As Twitter ditches its iconic branding in favor of owner Elon Musk’s favorite letter “X,” its open source competitor Mastodon is once again seeing usage numbers soar.

  • User_4272894@lemmy.world
    381·
    10 months ago

    I can fathom no world where you’d want to trade away a multi billion dollar brand for a new brand you literally can’t SEO. What, you think your brand is gonna be more impressive that the generic variable, and a part of the alphabet?

    “Follow me on Twitter” becomes “follow me on X”? “You should tweet that” becomes “you should X that”? The little blue bird on every shop window, website, and business card becomes a stylized letter that, hopefully, doesn’t look so threatening on the next iteration?

    It’s a textbook case of brand destruction. I almost regret never making a Twitter in the first place, just so I could quit today, or at any of the hundred days in the past year where it got inexplicably worse without reason.

  • Roundcat@kbin.social
    250·
    10 months ago

    Yay, another week of higher than normal activity, until the fomo kicks back in and they leave yet again cause “everyone is on X/this is sooo complicated/I just wanna see the fallout/whatever excuse justifies their addiction”

    • Sam@lemmy.ca
      170·
      10 months ago

      Every time that happens the fedi retains a good chunk of users. There’s significant and stable growth throughout.

      • Conowelle@lemmy.caEnglish
        21·
        10 months ago

        Ya that’s what happened with me, I deleted my account once Musk took over and started a Mastodon account and now I’m on Lemmy too and haven’t looked back at either platforms

    • Gacrux@lemm.ee
      75·
      10 months ago

      believe it or not its more likely they straight up ripped off U+1D54F MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X:

      𝕏

      absolutely no creativity. at least threads drew the ring in @ clockwise instead of the usual anticlockwise

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        48·
        10 months ago

        Saw this on Mastodon:

        Important sets:

        ℂ the complex numbers

        ℕ the natural numbers

        ℚ the rational numbers

        ℝ the real numbers

        𝕏 the set of fascists wannabes

        ℤ the integers

        • Beto@lemmy.studioEnglish
          36·
          10 months ago

          My favorite comment about this from Mastodon: “X is just a sans serif swastika”.

        • Gork@lemm.ee
          5·
          10 months ago

          I would argue that ℤ would also be the set of Russian fascist wannabes.

      • IverCoder@lemmy.world
        13·
        10 months ago

        Imagine a billionaire approving that “logo” despite how uncreative it is. Like get a better graphic designer I guess?

        • Gacrux@lemm.ee
          28·
          10 months ago

          only difference between billionaires and normal people is that billionaires have a lot of money. best not to assume they have above-average logo appreciation skills. although they could hire some good advisors i suppose

          • teuast@lemmy.world
            4·
            10 months ago

            yeah but then they’d be spending money to be told they might not be 100% right and perfect 100% of the time, and that’s just a waste of money

            • Sume
              1·
              10 months ago

              Billionaires wouldn’t care if they’re wasting money

      • FoxBJK@midwest.social
        2·
        10 months ago

        Honestly my favorite thing about Lemmy so far is that the web UI already has most of the things I wanted RES to have. And it’s all open source so we can just improve the UI directly. No need for browser changes!

    • TheArstaInventor@kbin.social
      31·
      10 months ago

      Or Kbin! Kbin can do both microblogging and link aggregation/discussion. Tbh departing Twitter users coming to Mastodon, and reddit refugees are brought together on Kbin.

      The “all-in-one” method acomplished by Kbin is a huge feat, especially when it’s built by a single person from scratch (ie; not based on lemmy codebase wise) and still much more ActivityPub compatible.

      Kbin is sadly very underrated imo.

      • Azzu@lemm.ee
        29·
        10 months ago

        I feel that’s a feature of Lemmy to not do both. I don’t care about microblogs. I want the sites that I use to do one thing and do it as well as possible, so I can mix & match what I use, and not see what I don’t want.

      • bassomitron@lemmy.world
        25·
        10 months ago

        It needs a mobile app to take off, imo.

        Additionally, since it is just one guy (that I’m aware of), I’m not sure how sustainable it is for him. I believe he’s been surviving off some EU grant and donations, but once the grant runs out and donations slow, the server costs for delivering content to tens of thousands of users every day are going to start being pretty rough to handle. Has he explained what his plan is for long term sustainability?

          • can@sh.itjust.works
            4·
            10 months ago

            There’s a beta sign up form. I got an invite and I was never on the discord. I believe open beta is very soon anyway though.

            • 1chemistdown@kbin.social
              6·
              10 months ago

              I’m on the form. Been on there for a bit. Mostly I like pointing out that an app is being actively developed for kbin, and that I have never used it so I cannot tell you more.

              I think lemmy people should know that @hariette has previously stated that Artemis will work there too. At least, I’m pretty sure they said that. Children have turned my brain to mush and my memory is about as reliable as a 3 year old.

  • dreadedsemi@lemmy.world
    76·
    10 months ago

    I opened Twitter page and it shows login page with small x on left and big x in the middle. But only one closes the popup.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
      5·
      10 months ago

      I just checked too. And if you close popup it takes you do another login page (also with an X) but that one can’t be closed. So apparently there is no way to browse Twitter without an account now, which you could before.

      People always used to claim that getting banned from twitter meant you were cut off from important information. It’s highly debatable that there was any important information on twitter. That aside it wasn’t really true you were cut off entirely, you could still browse tweets, just couldn’t post when banned. Now it seems being banned does mean you’re cut off from reading it.

      • cleric10@lemmy.ml
        3·
        10 months ago

        Twitter was really good for news media and it kinda still is. Where I come from legacy media have been bought off by plutocrats who are in bed with the government and only reputable source of news are independent media which don’t have enough funding or financial backing to appear on satellite TV channels. There’s also no incentive for the incumbent to let such media flourish since legacy media is doing their dirty work. So for people like me this is a huge setback.

  • danielton@lemmy.worldEnglish
    59·
    10 months ago

    I hear ya… The advantage that Lemmy and kbin have over Mastodon is that Redditors tend to be more technically inclined than Twitter users, so ditching Reddit for Lemmy was easy, while I only know a grand total of three people on Mastodon, and two of them are tech YouTubers.

    • TheRedSpade@lemmy.worldEnglish
      59·
      10 months ago

      Redditors tend to be more technically inclined than Twitter users

      This used to be true, but Reddit has been mainstream for years now. Today’s average Redditor is likely pretty similar to the average Twitter user.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19·
        10 months ago

        When a quarter of the replies on Reddit have become “this” or “💯” or “^^,” which it feels like it became when I left, I’d agree with you.

      • Tag365@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        10 months ago

        I feel like when the Reddit API controversy happened I was more inclined to switch due to the blackout vs Twitter which didn’t have nearly as instant of an event that would happen to get me off. Now all of a sudden because of Reddit I’m on various Fediverse projects such as Funkwhale, Mastodon, Kbin, and Lemmy.

    • Saneless@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      10 months ago

      Plus there’s some staying power to posts on here

      I’m replying to what you wrote 10 hours ago. My local feed would be a lot of shit before I ever saw this

      And it’s 100% relevant to the area of content I wanted to read. Same if I went to a gaming or news related group

    • Bogasse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      But in the other hand lemmy seems much more mature than lemmy.

      Don’t get me wrong, the experience has been rapidly growing in recent weeks thanks to the proliferation of third party apps 👍 But Mastodon’s first party experience feels solid and their new official app just blends in any mainstream app.

      • danielton@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        10 months ago

        I assume you mean Mastodon seems much more mature than Lemmy?

        Yeah, I’d agree with you there. I’ve had zero issues trying to find people and content on Mastodon, while I have had federation issues with Lemmy. And I do use the official Mastodon app.

        My only gripe with Mastodon is that it isn’t obvious that you should follow hashtags. I didn’t know this at first and struggled to get into it with post after post complaining about Elon, but once I figured out to follow hashtags, I like it now. I’m just annoyed that all the artists I follow on Twitter are flocking to Threads and Bluesky instead of Mastodon though.

      • danielton@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        The vast majority of my friends on Twitter are artists, and the older ones ended up there when Angelo Sotira (spyed) got greedy on deviantArt. One of them ended up on mastodon.art, but the rest of them are trying out Threads, unfortunately.

  • ComeHereOrIHookYou@lemmy.world
    58·
    10 months ago

    What makes this even better is that apparently Mark Zuckerberg / Mets owns trademark for the X logo.

    You know what that means! Millionaire monkey money fight!

  • teuast@lemmy.world
    43·
    10 months ago

    i never got into twitter, and the longer this goes on, the more glad i am about that

  • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org
    40·
    10 months ago

    This reminds me of the time that the movie XxX came out and it was difficult to find to pirate.

    When you name yourself anything with a lot of X’s then your search engine results are going to point to adult entertainment over the product

    • Wodge@lemmy.world
      18·
      10 months ago

      Just googled X, musk isn’t on the first page of results, absolute melon of a man.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.world
        13·
        10 months ago

        google is broken anyway after 2 decades of people fucking with the algo by offering SEO services. The search results are basically random now unless you really focus your search term.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
          3·
          10 months ago

          Google should have added SEO detection that would allow a site to be near the top for enough time for an SEO consultant to get paid, then drop the site to page 4. SEO would have looked like a scam before long.

  • deleted@lemmy.world
    40·
    10 months ago

    I don’t like twitter nor Elon but why would someone leave a platform because they would change their name?

    Elon has done more damage before so people who would consider leaving should be long gone.

    • Seasoned_Greetings@lemmy.world
      44·
      10 months ago

      You’re not wrong, but consider that people who justified sticking around for some reason or another might leave because the brand change (to a name that is so brain dead even a little offensive) finally hits home for them that it isn’t going to be the same.

      A brand name change is about the single most overt thing you can do to send the message that a product isn’t going to be the same. And when that happens, people tend to look at the recent trends for that product to get an idea of what to expect. The recent trends for Twitter happen to be right-wing echo chamber.

      So yeah, the people who were going to leave have largely already left. But this brand change is going to be effective at galvanizing those who remain.

      • sundrei@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        You could make the argument that all his previous outrageous behaviors were desperate attempts to squeeze more money out of a business he didn’t understand. But this… this is unhinged. It’s so bafflingly pointless and dumb it’s become clear that what was once a reliable dopamine delivery system could, without warning or reason, just… disappear one day. Even the people who rely on Twitter like addicts are starting to come up with exit strategies.

        • Uno@monyet.ccEnglish
          4·
          10 months ago

          I’d argue as well that all the past dumb decisions, (Twitter Blue, anybody being able to name themselves anything they want, bugs everywhere, not being able to see anything without an account), all of that was just stuff you only had to passively bear. Now, it’s a brand change that will at least have you typing something different into Google to reach “X,” but it is still an active change you have to make.

          If I had a Twitter account that was connected to my business, already had a whole bunch of followers, and was somewhat addicted to Twitter, I could understand having a hard time leaving. At the very least inertia would be a good enough reason for people to stay. But switching the brand recognition?

          • First off, you’ve disrupted the Twitter addictions of everyone on the site, because you’d have to know that blue bird logo is associated with a lot of people’s dopamine responses
          • Second off, now that people are already being forced to make a change, there’s less opportunity cost to jump ship to elsewhere
    • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
      37·
      10 months ago

      It’s a “final straw” situation. No individual straw broke the back of the proverbial camel. One straw after another was placed atop it until finally the back broke. It’s not the final straw that broke said back, but the load of all the straws including the final that did it.

      So they’re not necessarily quitting because of the name change. They’re quitting because of everything else plus the name change. That was the thing that pushed the go/no-go decision into “go”.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.one
      27·
      10 months ago

      Maybe because this new decision is so unbelievably idiotic either it is the last straw or maybe some people realize twitter x is lost cause? Idk.

    • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      13·
      10 months ago

      I don’t like twitter nor Elon but why would someone leave a platform because they would change their name?

      Twitter has been around for so long, many are attached to it on an emotional level. It’s older than my eldest niece; she’s known about it since she could memorize the damn word.

      So as dumb as it is that THIS is what pushes people to leave, I’m glad more are leaving regardless.

  • 99nights@lemmy.world
    37·
    10 months ago

    So the rebrand comes with X promising to be an app to replace everything?

    X gonna give it to ya, X gonna deliver it to ya.

  • cmrn@lemmy.world
    34·
    10 months ago

    This is probably a stupid question, but for those of you that use Mastodon — how did you find people to follow?

    I tried it out a few months ago but I didn’t like the few accounts they recommended, and searching for users or keywords didn’t get me too far either…

    • rglullis@communick.news
      10·
      10 months ago

      What I did in the very beginning:

      • don’t worry about the instance that you are on. My server is quite generic and is meant to be a simple entrypoint to the fediverse, not a “community in itself”.

      • Go to the mastodon directory to find the list of servers based on interests. fosstodon is one for FOSS enthusiasts, beekeeping is for those interesting in gardening, mountains.social is for those that like hiking, etc. The important thing here is to find servers that are not huge, but that have an active userbase.

      • Now, the real trick: for all these servers you found that could be interesting, you go browse at the federated timeline. This will give not only the activity from people in the server, but you will also see what they are following, boosting, etc. To me this was a way to find not just interesting people, but who the interesting people are following as well.

      • Be very generous when browsing these timelines, and follow as many as you can possibly can. During the first week, try to add 50 a day.

      • Follow hashtags. This will also make your timeline more lively and will bring different people who might be interesting to you.

      • Write an intro post, and pin it to your profile. Usually pinned profiles are always visible between servers, so it will make it easy for people to interact with you.

      • (Somewhat controversial, but I do it) If you have people that you like to follow on Twitter, follow them on Mastodon as well via a BirdSite mirror. You won’t be able to do it from the larger instances, but if you join a more chill instance (like mine ;)) it should be fine.

      • Evangelize: if you have friends on Twitter, ask them to join as well. Most Mastodon servers have a way to let you send invites to others.

      When you start getting the feeling that you are getting overwhelmed, it’s the time to cull down the list. Feel free to unfollow any person or hashtag that you think is too noisy or not really interesting.

    • FlatFootFox@lemmy.world
      9·
      10 months ago

      It helps if you can find a half-dozen people involved in something you like to follow at the start. Other than that, try joining a mid-sized (~1,000-3,000 users) Mastodon server based around a hobby, interest, or social group you’re a part of. Most Mastodon clients allow you to keep a column open for the people you follow as well as the people on the “Local Timeline” who are a part of your server.

      It’s a new social network. If you see someone pop up who’s made a pithy post or two, give 'em a follow. If they’re not working out a week later, un-follow them. Don’t feel afraid to follow a ton of people when you first get started to liven up your feed until you find a good circle of folks.

    • moitoi@lemmy.world
      9·
      10 months ago

      You need to follow hashtags but primary groups. You will find groups boosting toots about your topics. It’s the first accounts to follow then you will find others.

      It’s not that hard. People have to keep in mind, it’s not Twitter and so it works differently.

    • mookulator@lemmy.world
      8·
      10 months ago

      That’s kind of the problem I think. I was able to find like 2 people there I want to follow. Lemmy is going to be far more successful at displacing its alternative because all the communities you’d want to subscribe to are here.

    • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      5·
      10 months ago

      how did you find people to follow?

      Find tags that you like; follow the tags.

      Eventually you’ll find people posting in those tags that you end up liking; follow them.

      And repeat. =)

    • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
      5·
      10 months ago

      I joined up before you could subscribe to hashtags, so my approach was:

      1. Read my local instance feed and click on content that interested me.
      2. Checked the users that made the interesting content to see if they had more.
      3. If they did, followed.

      Nowadays I would add this step:

      1. Subscribe to hashtags on topics I’m interested in and follow people who regularly contribute good material to them.
  • Clbull@lemmy.world
    32·
    10 months ago

    Gonna play devil’s advocate here.

    If Elon is truly able to turn The App Formerly Known As Twitter into an ‘everything app’ that’s actually worth using, this could be a bone-headed move that pays off in dividends. It depends on what he plans to introduce to X within the next year or two. Transforming X into a messaging app won’t be enough.

    Musk’s line of thought here isn’t completely asinine. Let’s not deny that superapps like LINE, WeChat, Alipay, Taobao and others exist, and absolutely dominate the digital landscape in their own regions.

    Problem is, Twitter already has stiff competition. Threads is by far its largest competitor, and the moment Zuckerberg implements hashtags and trending topics, X is going to hemorrhage users.

    This is honestly the direction Steve Huffman should’ve taken with Reddit instead of jacking up API prices and gouging every third-party app out of existence. Imagine if RPAN became a legitimate monetized mobile livestreaming platform instead of some dumb social experiment with seriously limited broadcasting times/broadcasters at once, or if Spez allowed content creators to sell access to premium content á la Tumblr Post+, Fansly, Patreon or OnlyFans. Enough e-girls have been astroturfing the shit out of Reddit to plug their paywalled collection of nudes, so may as well cut out the middle-man and drive OF out of business.

    • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      40·
      10 months ago

      Facebook already tried to do the “everything app” and it failed in the US.

      And Mark Zuckerberg is a million times more competent at business than Elon.

    • MudMan@kbin.social
      19·
      10 months ago

      Yeah, you know what those have in common? They all started providing one service more successfully than anyone else on that market and slowly accreted functionality in the absence of a popular local dedicated service. Twitter is not that, was never going to be that, and it is not becoming that, certainly not with a skeleton crew. The same goes for Reddit, which was certainly bigger than people think but not big enough to pull that move. It may have grown into a OF alternative specifically, just from having a foot on that business already, but that’s about it.

      We do have one of those “everything apps” here, though. It’s called Facebook. Terminally online people don’t realize, but there are millions of people right now buying and selling used stuff, dating, watching videos and exchanging business information over it, even without accounting for the rest of the Meta ecosystem.

    • Shikadi@lemmy.sdf.org
      7·
      10 months ago

      That makes sense until you realize he already made a company called x.com that failed, and it’s the source of his fortune

    • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
      5·
      10 months ago

      If Elon is truly able to turn The App Formerly Known As Twitter into an ‘everything app’ that’s actually worth using…

      That opening conditional (emphasis added) is carrying a whole lot of weight…

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
      5·
      10 months ago

      Musk’s line of thought here isn’t completely asinine. Let’s not deny that superapps like LINE, WeChat, Alipay, Taobao and others exist, and absolutely dominate the digital landscape in their own regions.

      It isn’t a bad thought, but it should be quickly apparent that an American equivalent might not work. The West isn’t the same as those regions. There’s a complex interplay of culture, history, and the current market scene. A good business person would recognize the possibility that it might not work and just do exploratory work. Musk in his arrogance thinks he can make it happen regardless

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      How many people would trust Elon Musk with their banking details? I doubt enough to make the $44 billion worth it.

      • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
        2·
        10 months ago

        I wouldn’t trust Musk to tell me the time of day without double-checking on at least three other clocks to make sure.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
        2·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, how bad does it reflect on someone’s credit report if they don’t pay their rent and other bills for many months?

        Maybe that sort of thing doesn’t count on the credit report for a billionaire (because they don’t have to follow any rules), but it counts for most people.

        I wouldn’t even trust a thin dime with Elon Musk given the way he operates.