Unknown Speaker 0:00 Oh Joshua Warren 0:06 in a lot of ways, while it predates the issues with Twitter lately, Mastodon was designed to basically prevent that from ever happening on Mastodon it's designed to we're not, you have one person that has all the control, you can't have one company that has all the control. So if you don't like something that's happening on the master on server you're on, you can leave, you can go to a different server, you also have the risk of if the server you're on closes down, if because you know, servers cost money. So if the person running it or the company running, it can't afford it, it could in theory closed down. So you do want to select one that you feel is going to be stable. Darin Newbold 0:49 Well, good day, everybody, and welcome to Commerce today. My name is Darren and as always, I'm here with my wonderful and amazing co host, Joshua Warren. So we're, we're excited to have you here and getting this rolling. And Josh, you were talking to me before the show and kind of as we prepped for this about you are getting or saw 38x response, basically 38 times better response to a marketing outreach. And I'm like, No way. Come on, you're pulling my leg. So that's what we're talking about today. Guys. Tell us about it. Joshua Warren 1:24 Yeah. So specifically, that was a 38% or not 38% 38 times higher engagement on Mastodon versus Twitter. So there was a brand that post dinosaur you mean, not the dinosaur org, where there was a brand that posted the exact same thing on Twitter the exact same thing on Mastodon and it's just insane, and I'll just actually jump right into it and then explain the dinosaur. So the posts on Twitter saw 12 engagements despite the brand having a following of over 16,000 Twitter users on Mastodon, they saw 450 engagements from only 4000 4100 users. So smaller following on Mastodon much bigger engagement level, Darin Newbold 2:06 let's use a dinosaur then. It is Joshua Warren 2:08 it is it's not as old as a dinosaur but it is as big as one or hopefully will govern that way. But yeah, we're kind of joking about it. But basically Mastodon is a you can call it a social media network, social network of sorts. But it's not really in a lot of ways a social network. It's something that's a little bit different. I don't think we have a word for this yet. A lot of people call it the fediverse. So Darin Newbold 2:34 really, okay. Wait, come on. I'm calling calling this out here. You're either pregnant or you're not. There's not really an in between. So how does this work? Tell me about Tell me a little bit more. Joshua Warren 2:45 Yeah. So So Mastodon, it actually started. It's got its roots in open source. It's actually a German nonprofit that started this whole thing. And anyone it's an open standard. Anyone can run a mastodon server now just because you're running a mastodon server. And I guess, yeah, that look. Alright, going back another step. So Mastodon server, basically, there's a website, people can go to it, they can create an account, and they can post messages that other people on that server, see they can follow other people on that server, and interact with other people on that server. And if you're just, you're just looking at just the server's website, you can almost say, Hey, this looks kind of like Twitter. But Darin Newbold 3:24 well, I was gonna, I was gonna pause you there and say, how is this different? And I have a very, this much knowledge. But how is this different than discord? Joshua Warren 3:33 It's a good question. So I guess the biggest difference is, with a mastodon server that's participating in the fediverse, which haven't gotten to yet. Anyone, it's public, anyone can go to that website, they can view those posts, they don't have to be given access to a Discord server. So it is it's designed, it's really public first, and whereas look at Discord is kind of, you know, private or confidential first. So that's the big difference. But, but getting on because I'm so excited about the fediverse. The fediverse is the universe of federated Mastodon servers which, and they wonder why, you know, it hasn't seen mass public adoption yet. It's so simple, but, but really, all that means is Mastodon server can connect to another Mastodon server. And there's a group of hundreds of servers actually, that have all agreed to a certain set of standards. They've all connected together. That means all the users on those servers can see the posts from users on the other servers. And, again, now you kind of get to the point where you have Twitter sort of, and the sort of, okay, it sort of really comes down to if you aren't following someone and you're looking at a public feed, the default public feed will just show you posts from your own server. And so if you sign up on a server, and this kind of jumps isn't fun we were having before the show. I was introducing Darren to the list of Mastodon servers from Joint Master On, and you can join a server for instance, there's actually a server for the PHP community. And so it's all PHP developers, you can join that one. And all the posts you're gonna see by default are from everyone else on that server. Lots of PHP talk. I was kind of joking earlier about, there's a server called nerd culture dot d. So for our, our German audience that considers themselves nerds, there you go, that can be the server for them. So you can see Deutsch, exactly. So you can pick a server based on an interest, you can pick it based on geography. Some are just general purpose servers, the thing you have to remember is that the name of your server is part of how people find you. And so this is actually something in an article I wrote recently about Macedon for for E commerce brands, which is what we're supposed to be talking about today. They may want to consider you know, unless your target is German nerds, you might not want to sign up on nerd culture dot d, because let's say you are Walmart, your Mastodon name would be Walmart at nerd culture dot d, so may not really fit with the brand image that you want might I don't know. Darin Newbold 6:08 Well, okay, so you directed me to Mastodon, and I'm looking at the litany of options that are out there. And I first need to tell you that I think I would have paralysis of analysis just trying to decide where I might want to go for this craziness. And then, you know, okay, let's say I can finally get through it. Or maybe I just put it on a wall and throw a dart at it or something like that. So once I ended up there, am I stuck there? Am I can I not see anything? I mean, I you know, is this a is this kind of one of those lifelong sentences that I've, I've been banished myself to this, this Joshua Warren 6:46 location now. So you can actually migrate your account to another server, and you can see posts and follow people on the other servers as well. Really, the and this gets back to I kind of skip past this. But the in a lot of ways, while it predates the issues with Twitter lately, Macedon was designed to basically prevent that from ever happening on Mastodon, it's designed to or not, you have one person that has all the control, you can't have one company that has all the control. So if you don't like something that's happening on the master on server you're on, you can leave, you can go to a different server. You also have the risk of if the server you're on, closes down, if because you know, servers cost money. So if the person running it or the company running, it can't afford it, it could in theory close down. So you do want to select one that you feel like it's going to be stable. And that's why on a lot of these you can actually view or actually almost all of the mastodon servers on join Mastodon, you can view some information about who's running it kind of the legal structure behind it, that sort of thing. So, for instance, kind of getting back to some things I've been writing recently. If you're brand that's targeting people, just in New York City, let's say you're a local shop in New York, there's a mastodon instance called Masto dot NYC, that's you're going to be targeted and identified right there. If you're more of a broad based brand, there's a lot of really generic ones that are more like Mastodon dot social and things like that, that you might want to consider joining. Darin Newbold 8:19 Well, yeah, and then we find we found that one that was DMV, that was the Washington DC. I can't remember the AC Maryland, Maryland and Virginia. Yeah. And then I just passed one that was while there's even a garden state that social That's New Jersey. So yeah, it looks like you could find, you could find your niche. And all right, I can see how that would be. That would be pretty cool. But is the advertising opportunity or the getting the information out opportunity? Is it similar to what you'd have in a Twitter environment? or Facebook or Instagram are the let's call it the mainstream, the mainstream social networks. Joshua Warren 8:59 Now we got the mainstream social media. Yeah. It's it's fairly similar to Twitter. The biggest difference and the reason that, that brands saw that 38 times increase in engagement is there's no algorithm that basically every post that you make, everyone that is following you is gonna see that or is on Twitter, Facebook, especially lately. There's an algorithm that some cynics, which they're probably right, think is designed in a in part so that brands if you want to reach your followers have to pay you have to pay to advertise to reach those people, your tweets, your Facebook posts aren't necessarily going to show up in their feed. Otherwise, we're going to get on Mastodon no ad sales, no ads, no algorithm, all your messages will go out to everybody that's following Yeah. Darin Newbold 9:49 So let me ask you this. You were talking about? Well, we'd use it the big the big one Walmart. Could it be a good thing if Walmart were to create their own server? Joshua Warren 9:57 Yeah. And there's actually people that are doing That and that are then tying those servers into the fediverse. signing in to the other Mastodon servers, or to that network. I've even there's an E commerce expert, I follow that he actually created his own server. So he has his whole username is basically just very similar to what his email address and B was. He has his own private, private but public and connected into the network server. Darin Newbold 10:23 Interesting. So I guess what all does it take to run this kind of server? Is it just, hey, get something Amazon AWS or something like that? Joshua Warren 10:33 Yeah, the server I want to actually is run just on an AWS platform. And so that part's pretty simple. If you're familiar with or have staff that's familiar with running open source applications on the web, that part's pretty simple. I think the the hardest part is you are at some level, making a commitment. Whenever you set up the servers that you'll keep it stable, you'll keep it running. And some of the servers do, do moderate. And they will. Typically, they're only going to filter out illegal content. They're really the agreement to join that fediverse says you're not really going to censor based on viewpoints. But you do have to then have kind of some people that are going to, to regulate what happens on that server. Darin Newbold 11:16 So if you are our Merchant friends that are listening, do you feel Josh that? I mean, do they need to run out and either join a mastodon server or create their own? Or is this a, hey, we're giving you the pregame warmup, check it out, put it on your roadmap or on your on your view screen, if you will, but it's not something that you want to have to do right away. Joshua Warren 11:43 I think for all e commerce brands, you ought to join Mastodon Yatta at least reserve your brand name, kind of pick which server you want to be on. Get your brand name and then from there, what you do with it depends a lot on your target audience. If you are dealing with a lot of a lot of people that are on the cutting edge that are really active in technology, you probably ought to be posting on Mastodon like, I don't know if they are not brand that just comes to mind as anchor that makes all those chargers Yeah, if they're not already on Mastodon they need to be. But then if you're someone that is targeting an audience that you know is slow to adopt things. Maybe if you're if your audience either isn't on the web yet, or they're all still on Facebook, then you probably don't need to worry about doing more than just reserving your brand name you think Apple is on Mastodon you know, really fun fact. There was a VP of apple that join Mastodon and for a day or two after he joined because nobody knew he had joined or who he was, for a day or two you could actually send them a message and he was interacting with people until obviously the following get too big and too many people found them. But there are Apple executives on Mastodon Oh, and Mastodon messages that reminds me of another fun fact that we were joking about beforehand. You know, on on Twitter, you tweet on Mastodon you toot. So, some of the naming of some of this. I just envisioned some interesting social media marketing conversations at brands now are the messages that they do. I mean, are they limited to like the 140 characters like, like to tweet, there is a limit. However, each server seems to kind of have some different rules. And there's not really a clear standard that I've seen yet. I've seen some servers that have wanted to limit it down to tweet size, some that were allowing a little bit bigger posts. And that's the interesting thing about Mastodon is even though it's been around for a few years now, it's really the last six months that it's gotten the limelight, and I think they're still deciding exactly how it's gonna work, what its gonna look like. Darin Newbold 13:45 And we're gonna have some information in the show notes about kind of where to join and, and even where to find you and be able to connect up and everything correct? Yes, you can tweet at me there as well. So I've been looking forward to doing that for a long time. All right, um, I guess as we close this up a little bit here. Where do you see this going? I guess where's your You're definitely a futurist as you look at things. So this is kind of interesting, and has some coolness to it and definitely some freedom for some people. But where do you think it might go? Joshua Warren 14:23 You know, I think in the next one to six months, we're gonna see for sure. I think it's kind of that point in time where this could become the next big thing. I know that even even some of the things coming out of the US government right now. They're really looking at the commercial social networks. They're looking at how they're using our data. There's a lot of backlash against that. I think that there's definitely an opportunity here where Mastodon becomes kind of a major player as far as social networks go, and can be incredibly useful for all brands, but it's really going to depend on you know is this just a flash in the pan people are interested right now with all the Twitter headlines or is this going to be a long term to basically change in society at some level and I'm hoping for that honestly my background in open source my interest in freedom I love the idea of Mastodon But realistically, I think it's, it's too soon to see and that's why I would say those, those brands who you feel like your your audience is going to engage or resonate with something like this, jump on there because there is there's basically free advertising for you. But if they're your customers are a little slower to move on things like this, then they may never make it to Mastodon, so that might not be the right fit. Darin Newbold 15:42 That makes sense. I think, as with anything, is there some money involved with it is really going to potentially drive some things however, you never know. Well, folks, we hope you've enjoyed this. There's a lot a lot here. I do want to remind you that based on this is all information because mastodons changing on a let's call it hourly basis. This is based on the hour that we're doing and putting this podcast together. So you have been fair warned, your mileage may vary. It may be totally wildly different by the time you hear this, but we we love it that you've joined us and we welcome you to be here next time and until then, take care and have a great day. Transcribed by https://otter.ai