> You're taking a technology that was fundamentally conceived of in a "push-to-public" mindset and trying to fit it into a "push-to-the-group" mindset.
The benefit is you get to create one account that you can use in many groups/circles, while still posting things to the public and interacting with random users who are not in any of your groups.
It's like an inverted WhatsApp - the difference being that Whatsapp is private by default, and doesn't allow you to post to the "public". It also lacks features (e.g. threading).
> The benefit is you get to create one account that you can use in many groups/circles
Like an email address!
More seriously, fair point about the comparison to Whatsapp. But that gets at why I think this is the wrong direction to start from.
My gut instinct is that if you want what I think people want, then neither Twitterlikes nor Whatsapp/Telegramlikes are where to start (they do, however, serve as a series of lessons in UX and much more).
Except I cannot send an email to the whole world, as I angrily learned after switching to email from BBS's ;-)
Also, there is a reason every explanation of Mastodon says something to the effect of "your handle is like an email address - it's tied to a provider" :-)
The benefit is you get to create one account that you can use in many groups/circles, while still posting things to the public and interacting with random users who are not in any of your groups.
It's like an inverted WhatsApp - the difference being that Whatsapp is private by default, and doesn't allow you to post to the "public". It also lacks features (e.g. threading).