Yep, plus they weren’t ready for it. If they could plan, maybe can put a pretty front end to hide it. No marketing and built in user base like Instagram.
I’ll add this is how you get privacy and more freedom online, go figure it fails.
It hasn’t failed, it just didn’t take off. I’ve joined to check it out (I did next to nothing on Twitter, just isn’t my thing), and the process nowadays is pretty darn simple and straightforward, with a perfectly user friendly UI.
In my opinion there’s still a place for it, and if people continue to fight against this preconceived notion that it’s too confusing/techy, maybe eventually that’ll go away.
It’s just like email, which people generally understand — you choose a service (gmail, hotmail, your isp, your work, selfhosted, etc etc etc), but you can still email and get email from anybody else by addressing with their name and their service. It’s the same thing, but like Twitter where your message is public and people can follow you, or you follow them.
Honestly, if I were a government entity or some large org who relied on or really wants to use Twitter, with the IT resources available to host my own Mastodon server, rather than relying on another for-profit company, why wouldn’t I do that? You get full control while still making your social media activity available to anybody else on any other Mastodon server. Then there’s no worrying about another psycho CEO doing stupid **** with a platform you use.
