But Mastodon has existed for a long time now, and at least in my techie social circle, it seems like nobody uses it at all.
To the folks who do use it, what purpose does it serve for you?
Who is actually using it every day? What for?
Twitter is really good at the latter. Especially if you are looking for people to THREAD you up some knowledge or if you like viral content.
But there's also that saying that goes something like: "Every day one person is picked to bear the shame of all of Twitter, and your goal is to not be selected as that person" --or something like that. It's not exactly a chill microblogging platform anymore, but Mastodon is.
So, while Twitter might be a good research or learning tool, and Mastodon could also be that _depending_, Mastodon is also kind of open to exploration without some of the pressures or distractions inherent in the Twitter model.
If you want to microblog in a chill way and build up some fun toots to look back on over time, it's probably a fantastic platform for that.
Personally I took a bit of a Mastodon hiatus to explore SL and OpenSimulator, both of which are also pretty interesting.
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E4t8y9k1Us (Video showing some interesting worldbuilding in OpenSimulator)
Find artists: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/art
Comics: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/comics
Cat pictures, etc.: https://mastodon.social/@gargron
More recommendations: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/108521414258703203
If you would like, I'm [@karmanyaahm@social.linux.pizza](https://social.linux.pizza/@karmanyaahm) (you can see who I follow and whether they interest you)
As for using Mastodon, I would highly recommend getting an app like Tusky to have a proper 'all in one' experience.
The honest truth is, little to no-one is using it, hence interaction there is extremely low.
It is not early days anymore and we have given it enough time to get more users to make it worthy of being able to recommend it to anyone who isn't a techie over something like Twitter at the very least. It really hasn't materialised as the so-called Twitter alternative that everyone here was talking about for years. [0]
If you have 94% of total users across all instances not using the platform, then to the average folk it doesn't look exactly great to use or a great pitch to convince others to use that instead of Twitter.
Also, one of my colleague is using Mastodon as his main social media. Even though his account is set up on different Mastodon served, i can easily follow him too. It feels like e-mail, where you can still get in touch to people that's hosted on different server.
Several years ago, i cant use Mastodon because it's still full of bugs and there's no active community. But for now, it's already usable for daily use.
I don't use it, mainly because I'm unclear of what the implications of choosing an instance are. I have a wide range of interests and I worry I'll be siloed if I choose just one.