I read something recently that gave me food for thought. An alternative has to be 10x better for people to switch; and the core experience is what convinces people, not cool extra features.

I don't know how universally applicable it is, but I wonder how Mastodon stacks up in that. Personally I think it's 10x better, but is it really? Or more importantly, are we communicating clearly that it is?

@Gargron This depends so heavily on what people want their 'better' to be, and I honestly think the problem is that most folk haven't given it any thought, so there's no way for anything _to be_ 10x better, since "better" was never defined.

@Gargron In my dayjob, one of our main products is phone sales service, and the thing that takes up the largest part of our sales calls is almost always simply getting the prospect to answer some variation of "why are you looking for a new solution?" You'd think people looking for a new SaaS - or microblog - would be able to tell you why they're shopping, but nooope.

@Gargron (1/n) And that's just the people who are actively shopping around. People who are open to a new service, but aren't actively looking, the sort who might hear about the product from a blog post about a tangential issue, are even less likely to have a keen idea of what they're looking for in alternatives. And of course, you could just _tell_ them what's better, but then... that's debatable, if you say it, you know, it's your opinion.

@Gargron (2/n) So you're in this weird position where you have to somehow get folk to define (very solidly, in their own head) what a "better microblog" is, and then give them an answer to that problem they've spun up for themselves, all in one breath. It's one of the hardest things about sellings SaaSes, in my opinion, and I don't envy you the task.