Gregory's ServerCollecting anecdotes, data, and anecdata on people and orgs who’ve left Twitter and found higher engagement from ostensibly fewer followers. This is in preparation for a renewed pitch to the org I’m in, to begin the process of x-trication. Boosts appreciated!
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 Freedom of the Press Foundation has 1% of the nominal followers that it has on Twitter/X, but many of the individual posts have seen more engagement here. You may find my "eXit spreadsheet" useful to look at how other orgs are faring -- some who've focused on the fediverse for even just a year have exceeded their followers on Twitter/X as well. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p5crRGK0Y9MuFsfkyOBEC--3wXxFTd71fPCUcIFPXK0/edit#gid=0   @misc Me. I had about 3000-ish followers, but conversations here are far more meaningful. @misc Way more organic interaction here. All I do on hellsite these days is remove follows by "<woman's name>[0-9]{4,}" with no posts and no followers. @misc Well I wouldn't say I've "left" X but I am done with it, and I don't even care why this happened. Leave it locked. I'm more interested in mathematics related posts anyway @misc yesterday in my feed. I've seen the sentiment multiple times https://mastodon.social/@GeePawHill/111554771081963121 @misc I've had the reverse experience. I have more followers on Mastodon after a year than I had after 14 years on Twitter. @misc @julescelt01 There was a successful effort led by @framaka to prove that @lelibreedu could get more followers on Mastodon than on Twitter. After a year on Mastodon, I have nearly as many followers as I had on Twitter after 12 years. None of my posts ever got a thousand retweets on Twitter, and that has happened here. @benjamingeer @misc @julescelt01 @lelibreedu  @misc I had ~4000 followers on Twitter built over around 8 years, got 1/4 that here in first few months and much more engagement, up to 1/2 the raw number now after a year. @misc i don't have a huge following but i gathered a fairly steady trickle of followers from the time i signed up until now. i've gotten more engagement here than i ever got on 🐦, and more than on facebook, too, which was ostensibly filled with RL friends. (my fb engagement took a dive after they introduced algorithmic feeds; i'm pretty sure they shadowbanned me too, after i wouldn't shut up about the Frances Haugen revelations) i deleted my 🐦 last year, and almost never check my fb anymore @misc Following #hashtags dramatically changed how I engage with a social platform. I built my own algorithm, effectively, and I see posts on topics that interest me along with other users who share that interest. The hashtags help me find who might be fun to follow. Because of those shared interests, my posts tend to be read by people likely to interact on those topics. The posts I see here make me feel happier and more connected. So I come back & The circle continues.  @misc anecdotally, i’ve had much more engagement on here, and i’m still not at my peak twitter follower count. anecdata: i’ve had 4 viral posts here in 1 year vs 1 viral post on twitter in the 13 years i was on it  @misc : it is in French, but in those two pieces, I explain, with examples, how the followers count is mostly a lie and how people got a lot more engagement on Mastodon (taking the example of a Signal message) https://ploum.net/2023-10-29-le-droit-de-supprimer-twitter.html https://ploum.net/2023-07-23-pour-une-poignee-de-followers.html @misc @dmarti I had 7000 “followers” on the bird site; by the time I had 700 followers on mastodon I had more and better reach/engagement. I saw a lot of people share a similar factor of 10 amplification over Twitter. Makes sense; it was obvious that the majority of my and everyone else’s follower count on Twitter was bots |
@misc I never had a huge follower count on Twitter to begin with, maybe around 100 people. I've only got 54 follows on Mastodon.
It's only happened a couple of times on Mastodon so far, but I've had some of my posts get over 50 boost and likes. Maybe not a lot, but nothing I've ever done on twitter got me that level of engagement.