While it can be used like Twitter, it is a service that provides an experience that is difficult to obtain on Twitter.

For one, there is a theme server where people who live in the same neighborhood gather, and people who have a high interest in the field gather there, so you can talk about your interests to your heart's content.

Strangely, you can talk about whatever you like without being reserved, so that ordinary people can understand. You can use up to 500 characters.

One is the local timeline, which is a timeline where all the statements of the users belonging to it are gathered together.

You can look at everyone's posts, post yourself among them, and share the experience of looking at the same thing together, so you can enjoy it from the first day of participation and quickly find people who share your interests.

For one thing, since the service is not intended for profit, in order to display advertisements or make it attractive as an advertising medium, excessive collection and analysis of user information, and directing to make things stand out excessively. No need to.

The timeline is always in chronological order and clutter-free.

You can see if there are replies, but it will be displayed as 0, 1, or 1+. You can tell if you've liked or boosted (retweeted), but that's about it. The number is not known until the details are displayed. It is carefully designed so as not to incite competition or be misled by the volume of voices (number of supporters and virality).

It is a very free space where you can do what you really want to see and what you really want to say.

In addition, since there is no profitable system, the operating expenses and daily operations are covered by the operator / server administrator. We motivation is a strong desire to install and operate the ideal service that we want.

For that reason, the operator also participates as an ordinary user and enjoys it more than anyone else, and it is also characterized by the fact that it is easy to establish a good relationship in which the operator and the user cooperate.

For one thing, it's openly connected to a variety of other services.

Twitter allows you to follow, be followed, and interact with users of other services, just as you can follow and be followed by other users and stay in touch with each other's latest posts.

In addition to other mastodon services, it is possible to connect to various services such as SNS with different mechanisms such as Pleroma and Misskey, video services, blogs, etc., as long as there are users and posts by users.

Such a world in which services are interconnected to form a single network is called a fediverse, as we regard it as a federation universe.

Mastodon, as mentioned above, is a user-oriented service.

In addition, it is an open place that connects to Fediverse while having a locality where everyone can see and talk about the same thing.

Therefore, the key to making good use of it is to act as an independent individual without overly interfering or being influenced by selecting information at your own risk.

Below is my personal opinion, but I will tell you what I think. Please refer to it as one opinion.

A follow-follow relationship does not imply friendship. Build a comfortable timeline where you always follow people whose posts you want to read, unfollow people whose posts you don't want to see, and always see only what you want to see.

Likewise, people who follow you are just people who want to read your posts, not your friends. Like you, they may unfollow you in the process of choosing who to follow, but that doesn't mean much.

Therefore, just because someone follows you, you don't have to follow them to show that you are connected to each other. and decide whether to follow.

Follow-up can be an approval system.

Please feel free to do so at any time, regardless of whether you like, boost (retweet), reply, or follow me.

This is not only for the reasons mentioned above, but also because there are mechanisms such as local timelines and federated timelines that allow people to see each other's posts regardless of their follower relationship, and this is a daily occurrence here.

So don't be surprised if someone suddenly takes action on your post.

It's basically an open post, but you have some control over what you publish. You can set the posting range when posting, so let's take advantage of it.

"Public" post is a setting that publishes to all places without any restrictions. This is basic.

"Unlisted" posts are treated in the same way as public posts, but this function allows you to post posts that do not flow on the local timeline or federation timeline.

Since it is a kind of disclosure, it will also be boosted, and if the reply is set to be disclosed, it may lead to disclosure indirectly.

"Followers only" posts are, as the name suggests, set to be published only to followers. It is treated as a limited post that indicates the intention to limit the range to some extent, so boosting is not possible.

However, please note that it is not completely confidential.

"Mention-only" posts are set to reach only the people specified by adding @. You can communicate confidentially to some extent, but it's not perfect. Confidential information should not be posted on social media.