I read something recently that gave me food for thought. An alternative has to be 10x better for people to switch; and the core experience is what convinces people, not cool extra features.
I don't know how universally applicable it is, but I wonder how Mastodon stacks up in that. Personally I think it's 10x better, but is it really? Or more importantly, are we communicating clearly that it is?
@Gargron Re: content discovery, probably my biggest bugbear is being unable to search for public toots that contain keywords (rather than hashtags). And yeah, I know *why* it works on hashtags rather than keywords, but it's still mildly annoying. Feels unnatural to jam relevant hashtags onto the end of a post so I keep slipping out of the habit.
@emaree Another thing I do, if you find it more helpful, is to put the hashtags at the *beginning*. Like addressing your post to the hashtag.
@emaree Here's an example of my doing that https://tootplanet.space/@InspectorCaracal/100234041714670964
@InspectorCaracal Ah, I like that! Thank you for the example! 😄 It felt odd in my head (like I'd be shouting out 'THIS IS A WRITING TOOT, HASHTAG WRITING TOOT INCOMING' and annoying my followers) but it actually looks really smooth. I'll give it a shot.
@emaree No problem~ I think it conceptually fits in the same spot as starting a toot with @ somebody, so it processes nicely.
@InspectorCaracal @Gargron That definitely works with some hashtags, but most of my favs that get the most response (eg #writersofmastodon, #creativetoots, #mastoart) don't fit organically into a sentence.