BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!
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@Sevapopov @meganmariehart
AFAIK people can opt out of allowing full-text search of their posts. If so, you can only find people talking about opera if they use a hashtag #opera.@PatrickOBeirne @meganmariehart Thank you for all your explanations! It is great that hashtags are used in Mastodon as much as they were in Twitter, I already forgot how it was since I didn't use Twitter for ages and in Telegram hashtags are used to categorize things. One person that is new to Mastodon asked me what I can recommend to do if they don't know who to follow on new account, what to start with. I actually don't remember what I did since it was 6 years ago and when I returned 2 weeks ago I already had some accounts I follow. They use native Mastodon app, I don't know what they could do if they used FastSM. Maybe there are some recommendations or something like that for those that don't have any followings? Like list of posts or whatever?
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BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!
Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!
(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)
@meganmariehart I've read your original thread and many of the replies (including some of the rude ones).
I'm sincerely curious about something, though, and if you've said I missed it. Is there a downside to using hashtags that I'm not seeing? Maybe not a hashtag soup, but just, say, "# opera" at the end?
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BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!
Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!
(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)
@meganmariehart not boosting or quoting, but responding for the count
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@Sevapopov @meganmariehart
AFAIK people can opt out of allowing full-text search of their posts. If so, you can only find people talking about opera if they use a hashtag #opera.@Sevapopov @meganmariehart @PatrickOBeirne no, you can't find people that go to opera and like opera by tag "opera". you will probably find fans of some proprietary browser instead. this is an example of totally litter tag.and among that litter you barely can find information about real opera theaters and so on. -
Maybe I'm very strange but my metric for a post "doing well" is replies not likes or boosts.
A good post spawns a million threads and subthreads.
However, I'm on social media to ... socialize (crazy right?)
People who view social media as a publicity tool don't reply to posts, they don't even read their own replies. It's like they aren't even here.
Sad that on places like X/twitter replies were seen as a negative: a sign that people were angry at you. Dysfunctional.
@futurebird @meganmariehart
I'm on social media to watch other people socialize
.But as a general lurker, I like to use likes as a "keep it up!/hell yeah", and boosts are basically the same with an added element of "I hope more people see this too"
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BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!
Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!
(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)
@meganmariehart About the only time I use hashtags is for my Darkover writeups (I do not call them reviews):
* (hash) Darkover so people can find, subscribe - or block! them
* (hash) bookstodon so the Bookstodon bot catches and boosts them.
If the English of a post is littered with Blue Words, my eye will usually skip over it as I've come to expect such posts to be unusually self-important.
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@geonz Okay, my bad, not idealy worded. I explained my intentions in a reply thread later on. (In short, I want to convince people who are still fixated on numbers to join the Fediverse.)
@meganmariehart Thanks, now it makes sense
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BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!
Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!
(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)
@meganmariehart Frankly hashtags annoy me.
The idea is good. I can see using one or two.
But 99.9% of posts seem to use either 0 or 40. And at that point it’s just massive visual noise that adds nothing for me.
If they were out of band they’d be better.
I, selfishly, don’t have a lot of interest in making things better for people who want to just spam them on every post to try and get engagement.
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@meganmariehart favorites would have been the 'neutral' way 2 tell but i get the 'simulate' part
but then again well used hashtags will always expose a post to a more relevant audience, which gives the best engagement
Yes: There are "Favorites" and also comments. Neither of which happen unless someone reads and overtly "responds" to the post.
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I feel like I get more meaningful interaction (and perhaps even ticket sales!) from a Mastodon post about an upcoming show than from posts on other social media platforms. But a “feeling” dosen’t help when trying to convince people to join. Or to get active. My current theater @staatstheaterdarmstadt is on here since 2022 – zero posts! I would like them to get active or even set up their own instance. I think every theater should have its own instance! It can’t be more work than FB and IG.
5/7@meganmariehart @staatstheaterdarmstadt
Honestly I think a theater should have an account on a “local” to their physical location instance. It would give them a better, more focused audience. -
I feel like I get more meaningful interaction (and perhaps even ticket sales!) from a Mastodon post about an upcoming show than from posts on other social media platforms. But a “feeling” dosen’t help when trying to convince people to join. Or to get active. My current theater @staatstheaterdarmstadt is on here since 2022 – zero posts! I would like them to get active or even set up their own instance. I think every theater should have its own instance! It can’t be more work than FB and IG.
5/7@meganmariehart @staatstheaterdarmstadt I have seen multiple people post about having tiny Mastodon follower bases, but getting better engagement and sales than on the legacy corporate social media where they sometimes have huge audiences.
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@GeePawHill super convenient for negative filtering though. Some super nice folks out here also post stuff I shouldn't look at. If it's tagged, my filter protects our friendship, and that's worth it to me.
@iwein @meganmariehart @metalbrawler Yes. I play Oxygen Not Included, and I post threads about my play. I do add the tag, # oxygennotincluded, so my followers can filter it.
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@zazoobred Pixelfed is not fully usabel for many, myself included, because it does not support text-only posts and the video and audio support is weird. One is not really federated if the majority of the Fediverse is inaccessible, methinks.
@meganmariehart oh, I didn't know that, thanks! (I also never used insta, that probably would give me a clue upfront.. I assume they're similar here)
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@PatrickOBeirne @meganmariehart Thank you for all your explanations! It is great that hashtags are used in Mastodon as much as they were in Twitter, I already forgot how it was since I didn't use Twitter for ages and in Telegram hashtags are used to categorize things. One person that is new to Mastodon asked me what I can recommend to do if they don't know who to follow on new account, what to start with. I actually don't remember what I did since it was 6 years ago and when I returned 2 weeks ago I already had some accounts I follow. They use native Mastodon app, I don't know what they could do if they used FastSM. Maybe there are some recommendations or something like that for those that don't have any followings? Like list of posts or whatever?
@Sevapopov @meganmariehart
Follow @FediTipsI just use the web interface. In my settings I entered various search terms I was interested in so I see them in my feed. Use US and British spelling eg #humor #humour
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BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!
Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!
(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)
@meganmariehart Like many others, not boosting or quoting, but commenting here to add to the count. I've now seen this boosted into my feed by two different folks I follow.
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… to demonstrate that Fediverse posts are worth the time and effort. Perhaps there is also an argument for a feature request: maybe there should be audience metrics for toots?! Though I imagine that could be difficult due to Federation. Again, I have no idea if one already gets numbers and insight by running an instance.)
Perhaps we can move beyond numbers in the long run, but for now, I fear people enjoy them even if they gain nothing from them. Kinda like a game highscore, I suppose.
7/7
@meganmariehart I think I see what you're trying to assess, but I suspect that, to those who look to numbers of followers, favs or boosts, the Fediverse may be baffling. They may not be always see engagement as human interaction.
Re hashtags, I used them on a recent trip as I was posting a lot, & wanted to allow folk to filter those posts out if they wished. It also seems some general hashtags, eg birds, mosstodon etc, are of interest to folk who may not be interested in one's other posts -
@meganmariehart I think I see what you're trying to assess, but I suspect that, to those who look to numbers of followers, favs or boosts, the Fediverse may be baffling. They may not be always see engagement as human interaction.
Re hashtags, I used them on a recent trip as I was posting a lot, & wanted to allow folk to filter those posts out if they wished. It also seems some general hashtags, eg birds, mosstodon etc, are of interest to folk who may not be interested in one's other posts@meganmariehart But look at the engagement your posts have garnered! That includes the reply-guy who you obviously forced, yes, forced, to read your explanatory thread, and whose life is now in ruins.

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Maybe I'm very strange but my metric for a post "doing well" is replies not likes or boosts.
A good post spawns a million threads and subthreads.
However, I'm on social media to ... socialize (crazy right?)
People who view social media as a publicity tool don't reply to posts, they don't even read their own replies. It's like they aren't even here.
Sad that on places like X/twitter replies were seen as a negative: a sign that people were angry at you. Dysfunctional.
@futurebird
That’s just how I feel too. What I like here are the conversations. I’d rather exchange ideas with a few interesting people than generate large impression counts. I’m in no way opposed to promotion—I hope this medium also gets my music out there too. But it means more to me to know a few people listened and had thoughtful responses—or that one performer would like to play it—than that thousands passively know it exists.
@meganmariehart -
@meganmariehart I've read your original thread and many of the replies (including some of the rude ones).
I'm sincerely curious about something, though, and if you've said I missed it. Is there a downside to using hashtags that I'm not seeing? Maybe not a hashtag soup, but just, say, "# opera" at the end?
@naga Other than it eating into the character limit, I can’t think of any real downside. However, if someone were to set up their own instance, they could adjust the character limit if they regularly need more space for text.
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@Sevapopov @meganmariehart @PatrickOBeirne no, you can't find people that go to opera and like opera by tag "opera". you will probably find fans of some proprietary browser instead. this is an example of totally litter tag.and among that litter you barely can find information about real opera theaters and so on.