Book Twitter's New Home? - Jeni Chappelle Editorial

A kawaii bee to represent Hive Social and a kawaii elephant to represent Mastodon. Text reads "A new home for book twitter? Thoughts on 2 new social media sites"

With the Twitter writing community scrambling to find a back-up home in case Twitter does indeed collapse, a lot of people in the publishing world have been trying out some of the newer social media sites.

I’ve been testing two: Mastodon and Hive Social, and I have Thoughts ™️.

TLDR

If you’re only interested in my overall opinion and don’t want to read the whole breakdown

Both apps have some issues, but Hive Social is significantly better for people whose preferences lean toward the user experience of Twitter and Instagram.

Breakdown of my Thoughts ™️*

* I’ll probably add to this as I get more familiar with these sites. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments!

Pros of both

You can post text and/or graphics (I love Instagram and TikTok but find they require more ability and planning to create interesting graphics, and tbh, I’m still figuring out how to make that work for me, which means I’m not as active there)
Edit button!
You can make your account private and easily block and report users and mute hashtags.
You can share other people’s posts to your page easily (*glares at Instagram*)

Cons of both

They feel very insular because you have to sign up to see anything so there’s no truly “public” setting, which also makes sharing posts to other sites impossible outside of screenshots.
Finding people by name or username can be hard
They’re experiencing growing pains because of the influx of Twitter users, which means lag time, slow loading, and glitches (although Twitter is glitchy right now too).
They have room for improvement and transparency in their policies
You can’t see what other users “like,” which I kinda love on Twitter
The search function kinda sucks? You can’t search by keywords; you can only search by hashtag. It can be hard to find people unless you have their full username, including which server they’re on.
It’s also nearly impossible to find old posts (yours or other people’s) unless you remember to bookmark them
Edited to add: Written help sections are lacking

Mastodon

Mastodon pros

Focus on accessibility means it’s easy (and actively encouraged) to use alt text on images
You can follow hashtags
Engagement is better because no algorithm means you see everything the people you follow post
Like Twitter, it seems like it was really made to be used on mobile or PC.
You can make private groups kinda like Facebook groups
Edited to add: No ads!

Mastodon cons

It’s really not intuitive for most people and even worse if you’re not good at learning new techy things
Just signing up requires a learning curve.
The whole federated server thing is very weird compared to other social media. Having to pick one before you can see anything isn’t great, and it can be really overwhelming if you don’t already know the name of a good one OR if the one you wanted to join isn’t accepting new members. More on this in the mixed section…
You can’t block keywords, only hashtags or users (or servers, I guess)
It’s also nearly impossible to find old posts (yours or other people’s) unless you remember to bookmark them
Private chats feel weird
A lot of self-congratulatory back-patting about how much “better” Mastodon is, including the insistence on using their terminology. TOOTS IS BAD. Sorry not sorry.
A lot of mobile app options make it a little overwhelming to decide which one to use.
I’ve had some problems uploading images, and I feel like it’s telling that I’m not sure if this is a feature (maybe the file size was too large? I didn’t get any message so idk) or a glitch.

Mastodon mixed bag

The interface feels different from Twitter
I don’t love that everyone has 3 different timelines—the people you follow, your local server, and then all of Mastodon. I don’t hate it either. I just don’t use it.
The whole server thing. They each have different policies, and how well those are upheld depends on the individual admins. So not everyone on 2 of your 3 timelines is following the same rules, and you might see things from other servers that you don’t really want to see. Supposedly it’s easy to block other users and even whole servers, but I haven’t done that yet so I don’t really know
You can switch servers, but it seems kinda complicated to make sure all your followers move with you. In these early days, that maybe isn’t such a big deal, but if you get to a point where you have thousands of followers, this could be a real problem
No native gif search. This is a con to me.
On your timeline, you see everything people post, including replies to other posts, and it can be difficult to differentiate between OPs and replies
No QRT feature
The 500-character limit
The culture is big on content warnings, but there have already been some problems with the influx of new users regarding what content requires a warning.

Hive Social

Hive Social pros

Easy to get started.
Most of the functionality feels pretty intuitive if you’re used to other social sites. Feels like Instagram if it also included text-only posts
My “discover” page is already better at giving me stuff I actually want to see than Mastodon’s “explore” page is
I like that they’re committed to providing a space that prioritizes vulnerable communities
There’s some ability to customize the colors on your app, about the same level as Twitter: light or dark mode (dark mode was the default on my phone, but I also have my phone set to dark mode) and then you can select a highlight color from about 50 options
You can easily toggle between audiences *for each post* (eg, public, friends only, etc) similar to Facebook
Edited to add: The dev team is being very transparent with their struggles and priorities, which is refreshing. Fingers crossed it continues as they grow.

Hive Social cons

Definitely has some accessibility issues. I don’t see a way to add alt text for pics, which means including it in the caption. It’s mobile app only. I did see that you can run the app on iOS if you have a Mac. But if you only use a PC you’re SOL.
I don’t see a way to create a group chat
Umm apparently there’s a very very small admin team. This concerns me re: scalability and stability for the site. But they’ve started a crowdsourced fundraiser if you want to support their efforts. https://wefunder.com/hive.social.inc/
It can be hard to find people here too. I’ve already had the experience of not being able to find someone, despite having their handle AND user name. Edited to add: you have to search by the username without the @ symbol. So to find me, you might have to search for just “jenichappelle”
Figuring out how to share my own profile link was freaking hard
It looks like multiple users can have the same user name? I’m not even sure how that works, but it’s not great
Visually, text-only posts can be easy to miss in your timeline because the line dividing posts is very light. This is marginally better in light mode than dark mode.

Hive Social mixed bag

It looks like there’s no character limit? Or if there is, it’s really big. So, no threads, but you should be able to get what you want to say into one post. Edited to add: However, this also means you have to scroll past some super long posts if you don’t want to read them. A “Show More” option would be nice
As someone who gets overstimulated easily, I don’t love the feature of adding a Spotify song to your profile. BUT there’s a setting to turn off auto-play on those.
Allows NSFW content including nudity. Requires marking it as NSFW. Users can allow or block NSFW content
You can “save” hashtags, but I’m not sure yet if that’s the same thing as following them
Can QRT
Edited to add: Says you can mute accounts, but I can’t figure out how to actually mute an account. Similarly, you can report a post or account, but the process lacks finesse.
Edited to add: Says you can mute words, phrases, and hashtags, but when I tried to mute a phrase, hitting the spacebar meant the words were separated. So, I was trying to mute “follow party,” (because yes, follow trains and follow parties have started there already. Sigh) and the app wouldn’t allow it as a phrase, only as the separate words “follow” and “party”
Edited to add: There are definitely ads, but they’re clearly marked and actually look like ads, not like a post by someone you don’t remember following.

All of that said, I’m not leaving Twitter unless something drastically changes, and I’m not planning to leave Mastodon or Hive Social in the foreseeable future. It’s probably inevitable that I’ll find I like one over the other or that I can’t keep up with either. In the meantime, I’m having fun making new friends and exploring new platforms!