IT World Canada (ITWC) and sister US technology publication TechNewsDay have launched a Mastodon social networking site for those who work in technology or have a serious interest in technology.
This new Mastodon instance is for those who want to share their knowledge and passion for technology. It’s a community that shares common interests on our Canada-based servers, but can also participate in a larger global community.
Mastodon has always been the first choice for those who want to get involved in social media but are disappointed with the state of Twitter. As the antics continued on the bird site, Mastodon grew at a rate of thousands of new users per hour. It now has nearly nine million registered members. It may or may not be a replacement for Twitter, but it’s an alternative for those frustrated or worn out by the madness and circus antics on Twitter.
It is in this spirit that we have created our community at TechNews.Social.
“Those of us who follow and work with technology tend to be more logical and analytical in our thinking,” said Jim Love, chief information officer (CIO) at IT World Canada. “We don’t have time for conspiracy theories and crazy ideas. We’re looking for places where we can find thoughtful, analytical, and trustworthy information about technology and its impact on our professional and personal lives. We’ve seen top journalists banned from Twitter. We’ve seen people like Brian Industry icons like Krebbs said they had had enough and turned to Mastodon. So we thought we could use Mastodon’s structure to create a technology-oriented community.”
TechNews.Social doesn’t just invite like-minded individuals to join, it also follows the most prestigious and interesting tech journalists from across the Mastodon Federation.
Why have a community that welcomes and cares tech journalists?
To understand why this makes sense, you must have a basic understanding of how Mastodon works and how it differs from Twitter.
First of all, Mastodon is not a single commercial entity, but a federation of servers linked together through standard protocols. People can choose their own server or community, knowing that the community is connected to a federation of other communities, and they can participate as they choose.
This federated structure is what Twitter’s original creators came up with, and it’s what Twitter should be.
Another difference between Twitter and Mastodon is that Mastodon doesn’t have an “algorithm” to manipulate what you put in your newsfeed. There are also no popularity contests — the number of followers or the number of likes you get won’t put you ahead of anyone else. “Owners” can’t manipulate what you see, buy influence or game algorithms.
According to this structure, Mastodon users are truly free to choose who they interact with.
Mastodon allows members of a local instance to choose what they see and who they interact with. They can choose to see everyone only in their local instance (LOCAL), joining a community of like-minded individuals.
You can participate and share information or discussions in this community, or you can interact with the people you follow from anywhere in the network by switching your views to your main view (HOME).
There is also a third option that offers a wider field of view. In this view you can see and interact with those people anywhere in the federation who are followed (FEDERATED) by anyone on your main server.
Technews.social welcomes like-minded individuals and will select the best tech journalists in the world to follow, even those not on our local servers.
To join, just go to technews.social and follow the prompts. You need to get approved, but it won’t take long.
Don’t worry about being a “newbie”. Mastodon has been a very open and welcoming place so far. Part of the reason may be that most of them are newcomers.
If you don’t even have a basic knowledge of how to use Mastodon, check out these resources. For a very basic guide, we think Buffer is well understood. You can skip the section on finding a server and go directly to technews.social. If you want to dig a little deeper, we’ve found this guide to be a really accessible resource.
ITWC and TechNewsDay will be hosting webinars in the coming weeks to provide more information. While time is always limited, we will try to answer questions posted on the site. Direct Message (DM) @therealjimlove.
This is purely an experiment, but we hope it enriches our community in all of us and provides us with real social interaction.
We look forward to participating in this new social media adventure with you. Please join us.