I don't understand how it's meant to be used.

??

I've thought about it. I used to post somewhat rarely back when I did the whole twitter/tumblr thing. Really, I was just thinking of using it as a personal blog and writing down whatever observation came to mind as important enough.

Since I tend to really learn things mainly through rubber ducking it, keeping a running train of thought about my hobbies, etc. would really be helpful to me. Especially where linguistics is involved since I'd be forced to write down the words/facts I'm learning. I figured I could just probably not tag the ones that were just personal rambling so I wouldn't bother anyone.

........but then the very next day, I went into a whole mental spiral like I always do, and I remembered once again why I've never done any sort of journaling for more than a week. Nobody wants to see a live feed of a depressive psychotic break, least of all me the next morning.

I will happily check for and respond to others' microblogs, at least, and some hobbies have a lot more activity there than on the forum side. I'm still really waiting on being able to adequately keep up with mastodon users. Kbin still lacks a dedicated feed for that

I use Mastodon for that.

It seems to be the only way for me to see locality based content since my city's magazine is empty otherwise

I don’t really use it, but I appreciate that it’s there. I imagine that it can get better integrated once the fundamental aspects of Kbin are ironed out.

One change I’d like to see is having the microblogs merged into the main feed, but off-colored to make them easily distinguishable. Or perhaps have them occupy a side panel rather than being on a separate page. I often forget to look at the microblogs because they are kind of hidden away, so I just think they need to be a little more present.

I tried Mastodon in the early days but did not enjoy it for the same reason I did not enjoy Twitter. It is ok as a news feed but not so much as a "forum".

looks like everyone is ranting or talking about a hundred topics at the same time. like you went into a room where everyone is talking to themselves. not my type of place to be in.

@genesis I have started using it more. I am trying determine how I prefer to use it. Like how I determine if something is a thread vs post.

I don't because I noticed many people spamming their posts with irrelevant tags.

I used Twitter for a very short bit, and that was simply to follow updates from content creators from youtube and other sites. After Musk took over, I deleted my account, and that was a few days before the massive data breach.

I've been trying Mastodon, and just started getting used to it. But the nature of it compared to Twitter is it is very manual, like you have to make a deliberate effort to find the content you want to follow rather than it being pushed to you. There is a front page kinda, but it doesn't update frequently enough to justify browsing. I don't know if it is a Mastodon thing or a problem with all microblogs, but it kinda feels like I'm talking to Noone half the time compared to kbin and lemmy.

I've actually found it easier to interact with Mastodon via Kbin's microblog feature. I just tend to see more post I normally wouldn't see via Mastodon, and get a lot more interaction as well. In the end, kbin might just be my hub for community interaction and microblogging.

I browse tumblr from time to time, but mostly to follow certain artists work, and get memes and creations from certain fanbases I follow.

Tried Mastodon for a few weeks, but it just seemed to be people talking at themselves. Despite claims that one needs to follow people & tags and that nothing is pushed, there was so much stuff I wasn't following in my feed.

Also found the whole hashtag system to be incredibly frustrating. Their inclusion in comments breaks up the flow, to search (or block) you have to guess what things could be tagged as, then too many people tag stuff unnecessarily, so you effectively get masses of spam when trying to follow a topic.

On top of that, strongly disliked the need to follow strangers - it feels creepy & weird to me, no matter how interesting their posts are.

Oh and the rate of reblogging of very trite stuff was doing my nut in. Fine, if it is something you believe your followers will want to read, but otherwise it is more spam in their feed

So yeah, microblogs really aren't for me.

I've been getting some use out of it in the magazines I manage. I have some more ideas on how I want to use them, but I'm taking my time with it.

I suppose it depends what counts. Is Tumblr a microblog? I'm on Tumblr. I also have my own community on lemmy.world where I basically microblog.

But I don't use things like Twitter or Mastodon or whatever else there is that is copying Twitter's format.

I tried it but I don't quite like it. I understand that the place is still developing and improving so it may change. But since you bring up the subject I'm going to leave some feedback here.

I would use it if I could filter it to only see threads from my subscriptions (like in feed). Because I don't want to read a bunch of random stuff that doesn't interest me.
It would also help if you could collapse the answers to move on to another topic