So, I recently decided to open a misskey (sharkey) account on my 1 year anniversary on the fediverse. You can check it out here on @thoofan@sakurajima.social.
So, because I have an account on a different platform I wanted to do a small comparison of what is it like between the both. Another note is that while I am referring to misskey, I am actually using Sharkey, a fork of Misskey, on my instance of choice.
The first thing that hits is that this thing is not designed to work with other fedi software. This is to be expected as Misskey originally didn’t have ActivityPub and was added at a later date, thus a few social features that misskey has only works on the same instance or other Misskey instances. For example the Misskey quoting feature dosen’t work show on Mastodon and often breaks quoted posts and features like avatar decorations are a misskey only feature.
The next thing that hits is that this thing is designed for the power user. There are some features that you have never seen before and some you have only seen a few of. For example a customisable bars and menus. The right bar can be customised with widgets. The navigation bar can be customised with what buttons you actually want. You can customise your timeline functionality and behavior a ton, which you only see in 3rd party clients like Moshidon in Mastodon. You can add plugins, I haven’t tried it. There is a drive, which allows you to upload and organise you files and then share from those files. Liking a post? We react to posts, you can use the default react which just a regular like in the ActivityPub protocol, or you can react instead. Anntenas are customisable feeds, which filters feed by keywords. There is more, but this post highlights some things I was intrigued by, you can find out more by searching.
So, what is the vibe between both? Misskey feels polished, modern, feature rich and a bit bubbly. Mastodon feels polished, modern and clean.
So, take what you will from this. If you just want the fediverse with a software that most other software plays nicely with, is the most supported by third parties clients and is the most popular, then go Mastodon. However, if you want a spaceship for a social media and lots of bells and whistles, then go Misskey.
I personally feel like if I had gone with Misskey at the start, Mastodon would had felt a bit lacking. But, because I used Mastodon first and I am just going to stick with it.
That’s it for now, see ya.