Another (small) victory for the Fediverse
With Elon Musk now running Twitter, one of the best social media apps (well, at least it used to be), and wreaking havoc in general, many users are looking for an alternative. One of the strongest candidates to attract attention was Mastodon, a decentralized social network consisting of multiple “federated” independently operated servers that can connect to each other. The sticking point right now is perhaps the same obstacle that every burgeoning social network out there faces – adoption. But now Google of all things is starting with a Mastodon presence.
ANDROID POLICE VIDEO OF THE DAY
Earlier this week we started spotted posts from a Mastodon account owned by Google. Note our wording though: This is not Google’s primary social presence, but a new home for the Google Search Liaison account. There is an official Search Liaison account that exists on one of the main Mastodon instances, mastodon.social, and one for Google’s Public Liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan. It looks like both accounts are even going all-in – their bios telling people to follow them on Mastodon for “the latest updates” and tweets noting that they’re “cross-posted from Mastodon” are.
While this is an enticing development for Mastodon devotees, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Google fully embraces Mastodon. While the company might be concerned that Twitter could implode in the next few weeks, it doesn’t look like it’s moving away from the platform just yet. Still, the fact that a multi-billion dollar company is establishing an official presence on Mastodon is encouraging for the platform’s prospects. We would certainly like to have more Google accounts over there to be more confident about this, which we don’t have at the moment.
If you want to keep up to date with the latest developments in Google Search, it’s a good idea to follow this account on Mastodon – it looks like this will be his main location from now on.
In other semi-related news, did you know that Android Police also has a mastodon? Follow us there once you’ve made the jump from Twitter. We’re not Google, but we’re (occasionally) cool too.