this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy

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I found myself at not being able to find something that sparks my interest to follow on Mastodon. So please share with me your interesting finds. No restrictions...

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Finding stuff on Mastodon is more about hashtags. Eventually, by subscribing to #stuff you're interested in, you will discover accounts worth following. The Tusky app allows you to subscribe to hashtags like to an account. I don't follow people anymore, I follow topics!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Realizing this blew my mind. Definitely more interesting than following people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Not useful for finding people to follow but you now can also populate your feed with Lemmy communities. Also check out a.gup.pu !

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The only thing that sucks is it seems this makes it more likely to get spam since the spammers will just plaster up a bunch of hashtag words.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this something that's currently missing from the official app or am I just dumb?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it is on android still? In which case I recommend megladon. It's a fork of the official app with more features, like following hashtags.

I thought all the third party apps were really ugly, so I was happy to find out about this

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the recommendation, just installed Megalodon and it works a treat πŸ‘

[–] devdad 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Is mastodon worth signing up for, as a content creator?

I used to be a pretty avid tweeter - I’d post random things related to my job (software engineer), like gotchas I encountered, new articles I’d written etc etc, but I left Twitter when a certain somebody took over.

I’m not bothered about a large following, but I did enjoy randomly helping people that would see my tweets and fix their issue / help with the thing they were working on.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’d say so!

I’m way more active on Mastodon than I was on Twitter.

[–] devdad 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks! Maybe I’ll give it a go then!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

For sure, peoples' only gripes with Mastodon is that it only has chronological timeline, which I personally prefer over Algorithms.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In my experience (not an expert but I've been active on there across two accounts for most of a year) it's going to depend on what approach you take. If you're there to advertise your content only (not sure if it's video, podcast, blog or whatever but same applies regardless), you probably won't have a great time. Pure brand accounts aren't as much of a thing there as on Twitter.

If you're there to meet interesting people and share interesting info that maybe happens to be related to what you're selling but for the most part isn't directly pushing it, you'll be fine. Though you'll probably want to find an instance that allows self-promo, since some don't.

But bear in mind the culture around things like content warnings, alt text on images, that sort of thing. You might find that the sort of content you share on other sites isn't going to perform as well due to having to slap a warning on it for eye contact, for example.

[–] devdad 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not interested in promoting or advertising. The vast majority of my tweets where just sharing random things I came across while working, or reminders when I encounter gotchas (e.g. slices as function parameters in Go).

Being completely honest, not overly interested in meeting people either. I'll give it a few months and see how it goes :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aha! Sounds like we just have different definitions of "content creator", that just sounds like a normal account to me. In that case, you'll be fine, just remember to hashtag everything for discoverability.

Fyi it's also a custom to make an intro post when you join, tag it with #introduction and just let people know what to expect from your account. Load it up with the relevant tags so people watching them find your account, it's usually a good way to kick things off and get some initial followers.

Enjoy! :)

[–] devdad 2 points 1 year ago

Aha! Sounds like we just have different definitions of β€œcontent creator”, that just sounds like a normal account to me.

This was probably just me confusing things =]. I used to post all my blog posts etc on Twitter, but I have no intention of doing that on Mastodon. I didn't spend enough time ensuring there was a distinction between the two platforms.

Fyi it’s also a custom to make an intro post when you join, tag it with #introduction and just let people know what to expect from your account. Load it up with the relevant tags so people watching them find your account, it’s usually a good way to kick things off and get some initial followers.

Ah ok, thanks! I have already started posting but I'll do that anyway. Thanks :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you did, I'd absolutely follow you. Stuff like that is fun to read. @[email protected] Im not big on asking for help though.

[–] devdad 2 points 1 year ago

I did end up creating an account, but I’m not sure about posting my handle here as I want to keep the things separate (especially as I’m using my name on mastodon).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kind of completely depends on what topics you find "interesting". I never quite got the point of following people, myself, it's why I wasn't on Twitter. But thankfully on Mastodon you can follow topics via hashtags instead and just dip into the interesting convos without having to deal with whatever other nonsense people talk about on a daily basis cluttering up your feed.

Interestingly that's also how Twitter used to work, but I understand it's quite different nowadays so people struggle a bit with changing back to topic-focused.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Would you mind sharing how to follow hashtags? Couldn't figure it out n the mobile app.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

On mobile I use the Tusky app and there's a follow icon in the top right when you're viewing a hashtag feed. Imagine it depends which app you're on though!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I also am looking for this

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah no, the default app doesn't have this feature for some weird unknown reason.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's all about those #hashtags !!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Lists of people by topic: https://fedi.directory/ https://fediverse.info/explore/people

Mass-follow people by topic: https://communitywiki.org/trunk Or just follow a bunch of tags

And, once you have a few people that you follow, you can use this to find more based on whom they follow: https://followgraph.vercel.app/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't seem to find much of anything or anyone to follow. So Lemmy, who is funny on Mastodon/where is the comedy hiding?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Dont know about you but I find @[email protected] funny.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you're a Star Trek fan, @[email protected] and @[email protected] is there.

If you're a dev, maybe @[email protected] or @[email protected] or @[email protected] or @[email protected] ? @[email protected] is also there but not very active.

If you're a retro gamer, @[email protected] is pretty active.

Literature fan? Im a fan of @[email protected] . And @[email protected] do sometimes reply there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago