Mastodon, a decentralized, open source social media platform and alternative to larger apps like X and Threads, announced on Wednesday its plans to make its app more approachable for newcomers while also targeting creators with the launch of new features.
The changes follow the expansion of Mastodon’s core development team over the past 18 months to include people with experience across web and mobile and back end, as well as the hiring of a dedicated designer, according to a new blog post co-authored by Mastodon’s technical director, Renaud Chaput, and product designer, Imani Joy. The post outlines the app’s future direction.
The app, which is part of the fediverse — a larger, decentralized social web operating on the ActivityPub protocol — was thrust back into the spotlight when Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now called X, in October 2022. Since then, it has seen occasional growth spurts but has often struggled to retain new users due to its more complicated setup. On Mastodon, you don’t simply create an account with a username and password; you also have to pick a server to join — an additional step that often confuses those new to decentralization.
Today, Mastodon sees somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million monthly active users, depending on the source. One third-party tracker puts the figure closer to 750,000, while another estimates as many as 1 million. Mastodon’s own site says the figure is around 785,000.
As part of its coming updates, the organization says it will try to make this onboarding process more understandable, while also promoting smaller servers.
To date, new users have often defaulted to picking the largest servers, but that undermines the power of a decentralized web. As the blog post notes, “Mastodon is best when communities are spread across many independent servers, each with its own character and focus.”
New admin tools will help indie server operators handle maintenance and moderation duties more easily, including a feature to use external blocklists. The organization will also offer ways to set up content scanning for detecting illegal content and spam, along with other tools to reduce media storage usage by serving remote media posts through a trusted third party.
In addition, Mastodon will look to bring on more content creators, including public figures, journalists, and institutions, with a series of updates to its app. To do so, it’s introducing a redesigned user profile that lets individuals showcase their work as well as an enhanced compose experience. Also in the works is a new email notification option that would allow someone to follow their updates, even if they don’t yet have a Mastodon account. That could appeal to those who want to follow newsletter writers, reporters, thought leaders, and other creators, while allowing those creators to reach a wider audience.
The changes follow the rollout of other new features in recent months, including Quote Posts, similar to the feature on X and others, but with more user controls, and plans for its own take on Starter Pack-style user recommendations, called Collections.
The updates follow a shift in leadership at Mastodon: founder Eugen Rochko stepped down as CEO after the platform announced its transition to a nonprofit structure at the beginning of the year. In his place, Austria-based Felix Hlatky has taken over as executive director. In addition, Mastodon recently announced it will split Hlatky’s duties with Dr. Marius Rothermund, a certified German lawyer. Dr. Rothermund will primarily provide legal expertise during the restructuring, which involves three markets — the U.S., Germany, and Belgium.
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