As far as I can tell from my venture into Mastodon’s feeds, the demographics of that part of Fediverse isn’t that different from what Lemmy has: the same political takes, FOSS stuff, “big corpos bad”, etc.

I wonder, is there anything that Mastodon excels at that Lemmy just doesn’t provide? For example, I noticed that there are game developers and artists posting their stuff on Mastodon. Not many game developers (or any creatives, really) on Lemmy though.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    12 hours ago

    Mastodon is her better at things like updates in the way you mentioned, and it’s easier to build a purpose focused # than it is to build a community on lemmy.

    You’ve also got different character limits, so you end up with most posts and responses being easier to follow; just hit the # in question, and you’ll end up with concise responses. Which isn’t better than a longer character limit, as it often lacks depth and nuance. It’s different and has benefits though.

    It’s also way easier to find relevant imagery on because of the hashtag system. There’s no good way to look up images on lemmy/piefed at all, but Mastodon makes it easy, as long as the poster uses #s accurately. Since most do, if you’re into something like birding, you can find specific birds by a # search. That’s the best example, but it applies to damn near any subject matter.

    I’d also argue that it’s a better system for artists and writers overall, as long as they have their own places where they keep their works. You can’t drop short stories on most Mastodon instances, and big image files of art tend to not be ideal. But being able to put your stuff in a single repository of some sort and just link it via a toot for anyone that’s a fan is superb.

    • ..and the moonblades@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      So, microblogging is better for creatives of all sort and for those who want to interact with said creatives. What about fandoms? I feel like all sorts of fandoms are (were?) at home on Twitter and Tumblr. Has Mastodon caught up with fandoms yet or is it too small for this kind of stuff?

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        10 hours ago

        I think it’s still under the tipping point. The more fans use it, the more it’ll be good for fandoms, but it sometimes takes more fans onboarding and the thing they’re a fan of also at least nominally present for it to match the numbers of other platforms.

        But in terms of functionality for fandoms, it’s as good as twitter was. It doesn’t have the same purpose as tumblr or Facebook, so those can’t be directly compared. I would say that in terms of what a fan base could use Mastodon for, it matches or exceeds Facebook simply by virtue of not being corporate, which means no artificial barricades. Tumblr is its own thing though, and it isn’t going to be 1:1 with lemmy/piefed or Mastodon. The use case just isn’t close enough.

        There are fandoms present on Mastodon, mostly anime based, and the hashtag system works well for that, imo.

        • ..and the moonblades@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
          1·
          9 hours ago

          Tumblr is its own thing though, and it isn’t going to be 1:1 with lemmy/piefed or Mastodon. The use case just isn’t close enough.

          Fediverse has a Tumblr alternative nowadays - wafrn. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the culture there is much more different from both Mastodon and Lemmy. More chaotic and creative, it’s really nice to see!

          There are fandoms present on Mastodon, mostly anime based.

          I’m surprised. My (limited) experience with .social’s feed is that it’s mostly Very Serious People who are posting, mostly about politics. Maybe I need to dig deeper.