Also integrating microblog features to threads, like following the poster and boosting posts and comments, is great imo. And I can post microblogs to communities without @ the community, which makes the posts cleaner. And can post to Bluesky too through a bridging service for microblogging.

Also forgot to mention another instance (or rather software), Misskey. That one I like for following people through RSS since it allows the technology for external accounts. But then I set a script for redirecting the Misskey posts to Mbin or Mastodon's (hardcoded) search links. Mastodon's also good for RSS, specifically hashtags' in its case, but needs an ever-growing list of matched links in the redirect script.