THIS! (quoting @gaditb)
"Mastodon aims more at finding a small community to fit in -- you're "on Mastodon/The Fediverse", yes, but you're SOMEWHERE there, not in the meaningless ether of "try searching for things and following people randomly, maybe" in... basically all other social networks.
You have neighbors and a neighborhood, which again -- communities, and communication."
Well my neighbourhood (Exarcheia in Athens, Greece) is affinity based so it works both ways :)
@mayel @Matt_Noyes and similarly, my neighborhood -- https://icosahedron.website -- isn't really interest- or affinity- based, I don't think. We just like the atmosphere, and say hi to each other and all.
@mayel @gaditb this to me is the key element that is allowing us to take on the big platforms' #NetworkEffect where previous attempts have failed. A score or so of active co-op geeks on #socialcoop generates enough Quality Content™️ to keep me coming back in a way I never did on #Diaspora or #Ello, and #federation means that primarily internally-focused content nonetheless helps build the broader #fediverse network effect
Well spotted. The federated conversation primes the pump for each additional instance.
@taiganaut @mayel have you thought about making one or more alts, to just poke around in places? There's no particular reason to have only one account in the whole fediverse... (it's not like people have only one email address...)
@taiganaut Gnu Social has the Local and Federated timelines, right? That's one of the big reasons to check out an alternate Mastodon instance -- a different set of people obviously gives a different set of posts/atmosphere for the Local, but also jt makes the Federated, on a small instance, act as kinda a loose "other people are seeing X" rec list to browse for Good Posts or new follows from the people who you know from the local.
@mayel @gaditb Not sure about the neighbors thing, to me it feels more like a community of interest or an affinity group. Maybe it is dialogue based?