Friday, November 18, 2022
How to Find Your Twitter People on Mastodon
people you follow on Twitter may be on Mastodon and you can find them
Trying to find people you connected with on Twitter here on Mastodon is complex right now.
I'm using the three tools to try to get people's handles over here on Mastodon off of Twitter. All of these are a little unstable right now since so many people are using them at once.
- https://twitodon.com/
You log into both your accounts with it, let it work, and then can download a file you can then upload to Mastodon to follow people. The catch: those people need to have used it too. - https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/
Lets you basically scan your Twitter folks profiles to see if they've left a Mastodon forwarding address for people. Then you can download a file you can then upload to Mastodon to follow people (or manually look through, which I recommend). The catch: if might get things that aren't actually Mastodon addresses, or their colleagues info scooped up instead. - https://fedifinder.glitch.me/
Like Debirdify (number 2 on this list), it scans your twitter folks profiles over there to try to find their Mastodon handles. It also download a file you can then upload to Mastodon to follow people (or manually look through, which I recommend). The catch: it also might scoop up stuff that isn't actually a Mastodon addresses, or their colleagues info.
So far, there is no single, easy way to migrate. That is kinda what happens when a single company with 7,500 employees keeping things working is no longer involved. Disappointing, but Mastodon can be an alternative and stop-gap right now; Mastodon may be able to grow into a more resilient option than Twitter or any other run-by-a-single-company social network ever has been. Right now, much of Mastodon is just struggling to accept the huge number of new people using it. Patience is probably a good plan. Good luck, and let me know if I can help you. I'm @davidaugust@mastodon.online on Mastodon and have other links on my linktree, and should always be findable through davidaugust.com.
Labels: acting, mastodon, technology, trends, twitter
this posted by David August at 12:24 PM - 0 comments - 
Monday, November 07, 2022
Posting Tweets to Mastodon
automatically have your Twitter post to your Mastodon
So maybe like me you're thinking of diversifying your social media presence beyond Twitter and onto Mastodon. I don't want to have to manually post on both right now, and it is too early to focus just on Mastodon since most of the people I connect with not there yet, they're still on Twitter. I want to build for the future now by posting my tweets on Mastodon.
One way to build a presence on any new site is to have what you post on an old site get posted to the new one automatically. That's where a tool that posts your tweets on Mastodon for you comes in. I was going to try 3 tools to automatically post my Twitter on my Mastodon, and review them all. But the first I tried seems to do the job; I haven't needed to see how the others work. I'll stay with it unless the first one goes offline or stops working. I'll mention the other two here in case when you read this one of them is a better solution.
Without getting too technical, these tools will check your twitter for new tweets, and then post them on Mastodon for you, automatically. That is what's supposed to happen; unless something breaks or goes offline, it should work as designed once it is set up.
Mastodon is not a central company, so everything that runs on Mastodon may not always run as smoothly as a commercial product. Mastodon also does not have a single place to seek answers if you need help or support. Your mileage may vary. So far things often load more slowly with Mastodon than they do with a site/app like Twitter that is run by one company.
Not every Mastodon tool will work with every other Mastodon tool and instance. Instances are what Mastodon calls the servers that run it. They are run by different people, unlike Twitter which is run by a single company. These different servers, instances, can talk with each other. That lets a post (Mastodon calls posts "toots") on one server be read and interacted with by people on other servers. This can delay things. Sometimes if a server is down or out of communication, then the delay can be more than a few minutes.
Every Mastodon server being run by different people can also mean their policies can be different. Different Mastodon servers allow different types of content sometimes, and each have their own privacy policies. The good news here is that there isn't a business model of Mastodon gathering and selling personal information. In fact, there is no single business model behind Mastodon. It is more a protocol than a company or product. Mastodon is like a way you to do what you have always done on social networks, except without single central company running it. It is more like software than a single service.
Here's how to post your Twitter posts on Mastodon.
Mastodon-Twitter Crossposter
The first tool I tried using to send my Twitter feed to Mastodon is the Mastodon-Twitter Crossposter and I set it up at https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/. It was recommended to me and seems to work well.
Upsides:
- It can post both ways, Twitter to Mastodon and Mastodon to Twitter. I have only tried having it post my tweets to Mastodon, not the other way around.
- It can post images you post on Twitter on to Mastodon too (not sure if it can do this the other way, but it probably can).
- The developer seems to be actively connecting with Twitter to make it work well; they mention talking with Twitter support as recently as two days ago.
Downsides:
- None yet.
Moa Party
I have not yet used this tool (at https://moa.party/), but Martin Fowler, whom I do not know personally, does and says his Mastodon-aware colleagues have used it without problems.
Linky
Linky is an iOS app (at https://pragmaticcode.com/linky/), that is intended to "Post to Twitter and Mastodon with simplicity." It may or may not automatically post from one to the other. It might be more about posting directly to your Twitter and Mastodon easily from your iPhone of iPad.
IFTTT
IFTTT is a service/site/app that allows many different websites, apps and devices to interact and do things automatically. They do not currently have a publicly available applet (what they call the small piece you can configure to do stuff for you) that will post from your Twitter to Mastodon. If you are open to some coding/technical configuration, you can make yourself a IFTTT applet to post to Mastodon from Twitter (or anywhere else). If you don't already feel comfortable using webhooks, or know what a webhook is, this may be a bit of a learning curve.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions. My current links can probably be found on my linktree or at davidaugust.com. And I’m now on Mastodon at @davidaugust@mastodon.online too.
Labels: acting, mastodon, services, technology, trends, twitter
this posted by David August at 3:14 PM - 0 comments -
