Mastodon

[tomh009]

How about searching? How do I search for "Ukraine" and "grain", for example, across all the federated servers? Maybe this is not the usual use case, but it's what I do maybe half the time when I use Twitter.

This isn't really a supported use case. There's no universal search of all instances. This isn't even technically possible because nobody can know about all instances.

But even among instances which are known there is no universal search, all you can do is search content on your instance which includes content created or boosted by your local members and also by any users that anyone on your local instance follows.

While there are technical reasons, I think there are also philosophical reasons for this. The idea of a complete search doesn't make all that much sense in a social network like twitter IMO. I think it's also part of limiting the 'virality' of different posts and people.

Personally ... I see Twitter as far less "social" than, say, FB. It's used a lot by corporations and other organizations to post short news items and updates. Yes, there is follow-up commenting by individuals, much like in a CBC or a newspaper comments section.

Others may use Twitter and view it very differently from me. But it's quite clear to me now that Mastodon is not really going to be the same as Twitter. It'll be better in some ways, but it won't be able to do other things that Twitter is used for today. So, there may well be room for both Twitter and Mastodon in the future.