Mastodon Social Media Instances of Interest

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The Mastodon social networks have attracted a lot more attention recently. I posted on concepts behind Mastodon, ActivityPub, and this federated style of social media a few years ago. To help anyone that is thinking of trying out Mastodon, the rest of this post highlights some Mastodon communities (instances) that are worth your while to look into. There is also a very good quick start guide, which although written with humanities scholars in mind, is largely applicable to anyone.

Finally, see this great page of academic Mastodon groups, user lists by discipline, and communities/instances. You can also try this Find Academics on Mastodon site for discovering accounts.

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Switch to a Mastodon Social Network

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The Mastodon social network system is the most promising advance I’ve seen recently toward establishing a better, more compelling social networking system.

I’ll explain why I think it’s worth leaving closed networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, etc. for Mastodon. I’d also like to say a little about how Mastodon works and mention something nice for the academic community. Perhaps you use something like Academia.edu or ResearchGate? Or just a general purpose social network? Then perhaps you should know about some other options. But first, what is Mastodon.

[Note: I’ve updated this several times since originally posting it, as things shift and more people use Mastodon. Most recent edit: 1 November 2022.] Continue reading “Switch to a Mastodon Social Network”

Google Plus – A Few Early Thoughts

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After using it for a few days now, there’s a lot I really like about Google Plus. But some choices, I don’t understand. I want to love Google Plus and think that I will eventually but that’s predicated on all the promise it could deliver. And that’s not to say that there isn’t already really compelling stuff about Plus (hangouts and circles of course). This is not an in-depth analysis, rather just some cursory thoughts on Plus. It’s cross-posted in my Plus stream here. Continue reading “Google Plus – A Few Early Thoughts”

Wave’s Death Could be Preparation for a Rebirth

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Google announced that it would not continue developing Google Wave. At first read I thought this was an awful decision–Google Wave is a truly incredible product, which although it takes some getting used to, has huge potential. I thought Wave was one of the most important developments on the Internet since the Web. I was arguing in a previous post that Wave would be massively disruptive, disintermediating social activity on the Web while doing a lot of other very interesting things. After a bit more reflection, I think there may be something more interesting in Google’s announcement, and I don’t think it’s as simple as killing Wave. Continue reading “Wave’s Death Could be Preparation for a Rebirth”

Start the Wave: Disintermediating Social

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Ad hoc social networks: right now that’s what I’m calling the disruption Google Wave will wreak. I’m looking forward to it leaving the invite-only preview. It’ll be like kudzu sprouting everywhere, from its quiet persistance in the nooks and crannies of the Web, right on through to the most popular gathering spots.

Google Wave, or maybe more accurately, the open source Wave protocol could be the most important innovation to our interaction with the Internet since the development of the Web. Continue reading “Start the Wave: Disintermediating Social”