IT World Canada (ITWC), in association with sister US Tech publication technewsdayhas launched the Mastodon social network site for people who work with technology or have a keen interest in technology.
This new Mastodon example is specially dedicated to those who want to share their knowledge and their passion for technology. This is a community that shares common interests on our Canadian-based servers, but can also participate in a much larger, global community.
Mastodon has been the go-to choice for people who want to participate in social media but are disillusioned with what Twitter has become. As the antics on the bird-site continue, Mastodon has grown enormously at a rate of thousands of new users every hour. It now has close to nine million registered members. It may or may not be a replacement for Twitter, but it is an option for those who are frustrated or worn out by the craziness and circus antics of Twitter.
It is in that spirit that we have built our community 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) of 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 flight journalists get banned from Twitter. We’ve seen industry icons like Brian Krebs say they’ve had enough and move to Mastodon. So we got the idea that we’re using Mastodon to create a technology-oriented community. can use the structure of
TechNews.Social Not only does it invite people with similar interests to join, it also follows the most respected and interesting tech journalists in the Mastodon Association.
Why a community that welcomes and follows tech journalists?
To understand why this makes sense, you need to have a basic understanding of how Mastodon works and how it differs from Twitter.
First, rather than a monolithic commercial entity, Mastodon is a federation of servers linked together by a standard protocol. People can choose their own server or community, knowing that the community is linked to a federation of other communities that they can join as they choose.
what is this federal structure Twitter’s early creators proposed what Twitter should have been,
Another difference between Twitter and Mastodon is that Mastodon does not have any ‘algorithms’ that manipulate what is placed in your news feed. Nor is there a popularity contest – the number of followers or the number of likes you get doesn’t push you ahead of anyone else. There’s no way for an ‘owner’ to manipulate what you see, no way to buy influence, or any algorithm.
The Mastodon user is given real freedom to choose who they interact with based on that structure.
Mastodon allows members of a local instance to choose what they see and who they interact with. They can choose to see everyone in their local instance (LOCAL), joining a community of people with similar interests.
You can participate in that community and share information or discussions, or you can switch your perspective to your Home view to interact only with people you follow from anywhere in Federation. We do.
There is a third option, which allows for an even wider view. In this view, you can see and interact with people anywhere in the federation that anyone on your home server (FEDERATED) follows.
Technews.social welcomes people with similar interests and will handpick the world’s best tech journalists to follow, even those who are not on our local servers.
To join, simply visit technews.social and follow the prompts. You’ll need to get approved, but it won’t take long.
Don’t worry about being a “newbie”. So far, Mastodon is a very open and welcoming place. Part of this may come from the fact that most people are new.
If you don’t have a basic knowledge of using Mastodon, check out these resources. For a very basic guide, we think buffer makes a lot of sense, You can skip the part about finding a server and just go technews.social, If you want to dive a little deeper, we found This guide is a really understandable resource.
ITWC and TechNewsDay will be offering webinars in the coming weeks to provide more information. While time is always limited, we will attempt to answer questions posted on the Site. Direct message (DM) @therealjimlove.
This is purely an experiment, but we hope it enriches all of us as a community and gives us a truly social connection.
We look forward to joining you on this new social media adventure. Please join us.
