Tech only succeeds when it's easy - and Mastodon isn't...

The recent takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk has prompted a mass exodus to Mastodon. But can it ever be a true replacement? It will need to sort out its UI first.

Internet history is littered with the corpses of now failed social media sites. From Digg to MySpace to Google+ and many, many more, history shows that even the most popular sites can collapse in the blink of an eye. Being the 'best' is no protection if a new owner decides to meddle with a winning recipe, frustrating users in the process.

This past weekend, Mastodon has grown by around 220,000 users as people, including some leading commentators, have made the move. But Mastodon has a bit of a problem, and it's something that has afflicted many potentially promising technologies over the years, and that's user friendliness.

Twitter is very easy to understand, and its interface is straightforward enough even for the most tech averse of people to use. Mastodon, well, isn't, despite the phrase "It's simple" being repeated to me over and over. The 'simplicity' of Mastodon was highlighted perfectly with the tweet below.

Mastodon was designed to be a decentralised social media network, with zero advertising, and easier community moderation. But it isn't as straightforward to understand due to the way each user chooses a 'server' to sign up to. Sure, the tech savvy can understand it all, and to them it is simple. However, tech people have a nasty habit of forgetting what user experiences are like for non tech savvy people. In other words, if a social media network is to replace Twitter, it has to be just as easy to understand and use, if not more so, so that it is accessible to everyone, not just the nerds.

The lesson any tech company can learn is that products only succeed when they are easy to use, convenient, cost effective, and can adapt. VHS wasn't as good as Betamax, but the cassettes were smaller, and so were the recorders. VHS was cheaper and offered longer record times, and Sony's bet that the better image quality of Beta would win over consumers, despite the drawbacks, was a colossal misjudgement.

Blackberry phones might have been secure, and in some cases very capable, but the company failed to adapt when devices like the iPhone won people over with a silky smooth user interface and efficient simplicity. I had a Blackberry at one time, and the clunkiness of setting it up was mind numbing. I ditched it for an iPhone and never looked back.

The most important lesson of all to learn, particularly when it comes to software and internet platforms, is that no company is large enough to fail or fade into insignificance. If Twitter does indeed continue to haemorrhage users the move to Mastodon will only be temporary. We need to be ready for a number of different platforms to fight it out with one of them eventually becoming significantly more popular. Twitter's user base is so large that it could be quite some time before another platform becomes as popular. Yes, it's true that Twitter can be a cesspit of hell sometimes, but it is also home to some very knowledgable commentators and analysts. Recently it has become a new home for photographers who have been abandoning Instagram, too. We're in for a bumpy ride.