Mastodon, an alternative to X, plans to target developers with new features
Mastodon, an open-source social media platform and alternative to big apps like X and Threads, announced Wednesday its plans to make its app more accessible to newcomers while also targeting creators with the introduction of new features.
These changes follow the expansion of Mastodon’s development team over the past 18 months to include people with experience across the web and mobile and backend, as well as the hiring of a dedicated designer, according to a new blog post put together by Mastodon’s technical director, Renaud Chaput, and product designer, Imani Joy. The post outlines the future direction of the app.
The application, which is part of fediverse – a larger, decentralized social web that operates on the ActivityPub protocol – was also put in the spotlight when Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now called iX, in October 2022. Since then, it has seen occasional growth, but often struggles to retain new users due to its complex setup. At Mastodon, you don’t just create an account with a username and password; and you have to choose a server to join – an extra step that often confuses those new to internationalization.
Today, Mastodon sees somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million active users each month, depending on the source. One third-party tracker puts the number closer to 750,000, while another estimates around 1 million. The Mastodon site says the number is around 785,000.
As part of its upcoming updates, the organization says it will try to make the on-boarding process more straightforward, while also developing smaller servers.
Until now, new users have often preferred to choose very large servers, but that undermines the power of the decentralized web. As the blog post notes, “Mastodon excels when communities are distributed across multiple independent servers, each with its own character and focus.”
New management tools will help indie server operators manage maintenance and monitoring tasks with ease, including a feature to use external blacklists. The organization will also provide ways to set up content scanning to detect illegal and spam content, as well as other tools to reduce media storage usage by providing remote media posting through a trusted third party.
In addition, Mastodon will look to bring in more content creators, including public figures, journalists, and institutions, through a series of updates to its app. To do so, we are introducing a redesigned user profile that allows individuals to showcase their work and enhanced creative 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 can appeal to those who want to follow bloggers, journalists, thought leaders, and other creators, while allowing those creators to reach a wider audience.
The changes follow the release of other new features in recent months, including the Quote post, which is similar to the feature in X and others, but with more user controls, and plans to take its recommendations from users in the style of the Starter Pack, called Collections.
The updates follow a leadership change at Mastodon: founder Eugen Rochko stepped down as CEO after the platform announced a transition to a non-profit structure earlier this year. In his place, Austria-based Felix Hlatky has taken over as executive director. In addition, Mastodon recently announced that it will separate the duties of Hlatky and Dr. Marius Rothermund, certified German lawyer. Dr. Rothermund will primarily provide legal expertise during the restructuring, which includes three markets – the US, Germany, and Belgium.
