You are probably here because you’re migrating from Twitter. At first, using Mastodon could be a confusing experience, but do not fret! With this simple, easy guide you will get yourself up to speed in no time and will confidently explore an (admittedly weird) Twitter alternative you have heard about so much.
Depending on where you signed up from, your interface might look like one of these two:
Looks and feels familiar so far, right? Sure, the color scheme might not be what you’re used to, and the interface is not as busy as it was over at twitter, but it’s the same idea.
You might, however, notice a few slight differences, namely, the @ from the title of this section. On twitter, you have been used to refer to other users by their @handle, and it is much the same case here! Every user has their own little username you can mention them by, but you might have also noticed that some people have two of them. What’s the deal with that?
Well, friend, have you ever used email? Mastodon is works in kind of a similar way. We all have emails on different services. You might use Gmail, or Outlook, or Yahoo, or ProtonMail, or any other email provider out there on the net. But even if you are using, say, gmail, you can still send a letter to your friend who’s using outlook, right? It’s the same thing here.
Let’s take a look at a more practical example. On mastodon, if you have signed up with Gensokyo.social (most likely through the mobile app you downloaded from the store), your username would look something like this:
The first part, which is CoolGuy, is your username. That’s the handle you’ve picked for yourself when you first signed up. The second part, which would be gensokyo.social in our example (but it can be any other name, we’ll get into that later), is your ***instance name.
You can read this as [CoolGuy* on gensokyo.social].**
What is this instance? Well, think of it as if it’s a small community. There are many-many Mastodon instances, each operated by an independent person, using their own free time and their own hardware, beholden to nobody but their own community members and rules they collectively set together. And much like with our previous example with email, even though we’re all on different instances, we still can talk to each other, follow each other, share posts and photos with each other, and so on.
It sounds a bit confusing, I will admit, but once you spend a few days on the app, it will become second nature to you.
”But Dale!” you might ask “Some users on my timeline have that second @, and some do not! What’s up with that?”
That’s how you know who’s on your instance, and who’s not! If a person does not have the second @, they are your fellow community member, using the very same instance as you are. If they do, however, that means it’s someone from some other community.
”Ok, that’s all cool, but how do I tell which, uhm, instance, do I belong to?”
That’s very easy! If you’re using a web browser, simply look at the web address. That’s it!
That’s it! That’s your instance’s name!
If you are on mobile, just longtap your profile picture in the lower right corner of the app, and you can see it!
”Alright, I got all of that. But it’s still pretty lonely and empty here.”
I get it, I get it, it’s pretty intimidating at first. You sign up, your timelines are empty, there are a lot of confusing terminology in the UI and you just want to find cool people to follow and communicate with, but your timeline is empty. There’s a remedy for that, The Profile Directory.
On web, you would click this button here:
On mobile, simply go to search, scroll the tabs all the way to the right, and click on “For You Tab”
From there, you can explore different people across different communities and pick the ones you’d love to follow, and then just… follow them!
If you’re using a browser, however, there’s an even better way to find more people to follow, which is Local and Federated tabs.
The Local tab would show you all the posts made by your fellow community members! Thing about it like your own local corner of the great Mastodon network. The Federated tab, respectively, aggregates all posts from all around wider Mastodon.
Both options are great ways to quickly populate your timeline and find like-minded individuals to interact with. Just be careful that some people might have their own boundaries and limitations set, so check their profile before interacting first, and respect their wish not to engage with you if they tell you so. Mutual respect of boundaries is at the core of every interaction on Mastodon.