Mastodon Beginner's Guide: The Trending Social Network as a Twitter Alternative

Mastodon is decentralized, thus unlike Twitter or Facebook, it is not restricted to a single server run by a single major corporation. Instead, anyone can build their own Mastodon instance—commonly referred to as a server—complete with its own set of rules. This means that you establish the rules for a Mastodon server and that no ads are served here, and no data is being collected. The best feature of Mastodon is that, even if you are not a member of that instance, you can follow folks there. Imagine being able to communicate with someone in a Facebook group or WhatsApp chat without first joining that group. The remainder is routine. You can share photographs and videos, compose posts with a maximum of 500 characters, repost other people's stuff, and more.

Mastodon Beginner's Guide

Steps to join Mastodon

Finding the ideal server, though, is the biggest headache on Mastodon. You might wish to associate with Los Angeles Lakers supporters, environmentalists, or just average individuals who enjoy discussing cats. You will be assigned a username that is appropriate for the server you choose. My username might be something like @nadeem@sandwichstans, for instance, if I joined a hypothetical Mastodon server called "sandwichstans" that is all about sandwiches. The process is the same as when you join up for services like Gmail or Outlook to receive an email address. We'll start with the official Mastodon app for iPhones because it's the easiest to use, but the sign-up procedure is the same for the Android version as well.

• The Sign Up and Log In choices will be available when you first open the app. Tap the Sign Up button if this is your first tango with Mastodon.
• After clicking the Sign Up button, you will be sent to a page with options for choosing a server. Open servers are categorized here according to, among other things, music, regional, technology, gaming, and food.
• Choose a server from any of the genres that appeal to you in step three. If you don't find anything of interest, try utilizing the search box at the top of the page to look up relevant terms. For positive energy, let's start with the "ravenation.club" server in the music section. Then click the Next button at the bottom after selecting the ravenation.club checkbox.
• On the following page, you will find a list of straightforward principles that are simple to understand. After reading the ground rules, use the Next button.
• At this point, you'll be on the signup screen, where you can select both your display name and your username. As the email address will be required for recovery if you lose account access or forget the password, you must also include it when linking your account.
• Tap the Next button after selecting your Mastodon account's username and password. A message for identity verification will now be sent by Mastodon to the email address you supplied earlier. The email's contents should like the one in the attachment:
• Return to the Mastodon app after confirming the account creation in the email. You will then be automatically forwarded to the app's main feed, where you may begin posting your toots. Yes, Mastodon's equivalent of tweets is referred to as a toot.
• On the Mastodon mobile app, this is how your primary social media page appears. Users should have little trouble understanding Mastodon's basic social media system because of the familiar look and simple terminology.

Search & follow other Mastodon users

Your Mastodon profile will be empty when you initially create your account. It's now time to create a network. The simplest method to do this is to follow members of your community or members of other communities whose posts may be of interest. To do this, press on the search icon at the bottom to access the explore feed for your server. If a person has a Mastodon account, you can simply look them up by name in the search area to get a suggested profile. For instance, I looked up James Gunn and found the renowned film director's Mastodon account. You will find stuff that has been thoughtfully divided into five areas on the Explore page. The Posts section mainly functions as an automated feed of popular or important accounts' toots. If you enjoy a particular toot, would you like to follow its author's Mastodon activity? Simply tap the Follow button after selecting the profile photo. It makes no difference whether the person is from the same group as you—in my example, @ravenation—or not. Once you follow them, your feed will start to show their posts. Do you only want to communicate with the people on your server? To see toots just from members of your community, slide to the Community carousel at the top of the screen. Naturally, you can do the same things you would on Twitter or Facebook and leave comments, repost, or share the toots. You're welcome to browse the hashtag area if that's how you prefer to follow conversations on social media. A feed of news that might be interesting to you can be found in the News feed. The For You page, which lists significant accounts both inside and outside of your server who are worth following, is the last page. Going through the Following list of the first influential person you've followed is a quick approach to find cool accounts worth following.

How to add contacts from Twitter to Mastodon?

[caption id="attachment_60684" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] Image credit: techcrunch[/caption] The alternative I explored is Twitodon, which instantly displays the aforementioned list and makes it simple to transfer those connections into your own Mastodon profile. Here is a detailed tutorial for using Twitodon on a mobile device:

• Launch your preferred web browser on your phone or desktop and navigate to the Twitodon website.
• After arriving at the Twitodon website, click the link that says "Log in with Twitter." 
• You'll now arrive at a website where you must give Twitodon permission to access your Twitter account. To get started, provide the login information for your Twitter account. Should you be concerned, Twitodon does not gather information like the password to your Twitter account. Additionally, you have the option to revoke Twitodon's access once you're done.
• You will be returned to the Twitodon website automatically after completing the Twitter authorisation process.
• You must now carry out the identical procedure for your Mastodon account. Simply provide your Mastodon login into the box provided in Step 2 and click the Login button to proceed.

• On the following page, enter the sign-in information for your Mastodon account. As soon as you're finished, Twitodon will search through your Twitter contacts and build a list of people who have linked to Mastodon on their Twitter profiles. Download the new mastodon follows.csv CSV file to your phone now.
• At this point, launch the Mastodon app on your phone and go to the settings page by using these instructions: Configuration > Import and Export > Import. Make sure the Merge system is selected on the import page.

Mastodon offers many significant advantages over Twitter, but its user interface (UI) and feature set aren't as satisfying as those of its far more resourceful competitor. However, since Twitter's new CEO and owner started making contentious modifications to the platform, the service has swiftly amassed a huge following. Mastodon's fundamentals require some study, but once you've created your own community there, the high level of control will make you feel right at home.