Mastodon and Twitter

So Twitter is falling apart because an egotistical, emotionally-fragile rich guy bought it and seems to be struggling to run it. This is sad to me, because I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment from Twitter since I started using it over 10 years ago.

Twitter is an interesting platform. For communicating with people you know (in real life), it’s pretty bad. For following news, it’s also pretty bad despite being the center of attention for basically all journalists. But once you get a nice timeline curated, it’s a really wonderful place.

Where Twitter excels is at giving interesting people a place to say interesting things. Funny enough it’s also really good for following news, but only if you focus on a specific topic. For me it’s the place to go for F1 news (especially during race weekends).

But now it seems to be a sinking ship. And that makes me a bit sad.

So now there’s Mastodon.

I say “now” but Mastodon has been around for a while, of course. I actually set up my account on mastodon.social years ago but I didn’t ever do anything with it. This past weekend I took another try and found some more people to follow.

Interesting people with interesting things to say.

Honestly, I kind of love it. It feels like Twitter from 10 years ago. It’s fun and lively. My timeline is weird and a bit sparse, but that’s how it started for me at Twitter. But people are flooding into Mastodon so it’s getting easier by the hour to find people to follow.

I’m not running from Twitter just yet. It’s still the best place to follow F1 news, but Mastodon has certainly caught my attention and I will certainly be using it more. Come follow me, though I probably won’t post a lot (just like Twitter).