Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, plans to target creators with new features

MastodonA A decentralized and open source social media platform Google, an alternative to larger apps like X and Threads, on Wednesday announced its plans to make its app more accessible to newcomers while also targeting creators with the launch of new features.

The changes come on the heels of the expansion of Mastodon’s core development team over the past 18 months to include people with experience across web, mobile and backend, as well as the hiring of a dedicated designer, according to a new report Blog post Co-written by Mastodon’s Art Director, Renaud Chabot, and Product Designer Imani Joy. The post outlines the future direction of the app.

The application, which is part of Federalism — a larger decentralized social network running on the ActivityPub protocol — returned to 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 complex setup. At Mastodon, you can’t simply create an account with a username and password; You also have to choose a server to join – an extra step that often confuses newbies to decentralization.

Today, Mastodon sees between 750,000 and 1 million monthly active users, depending on the source. one Third party tracking He puts the number closer to 750 thousand, while another puts the number at 1 million. Mastodon’s own website The number says around 785,000.

As part of its upcoming updates, the organization says it will try to make this setup process more understandable, while also promoting smaller servers.

Until now, new users have often defaulted to the largest servers, but this undermines the power of the decentralized web. As the blog post notes, “Mastodon works best when communities are spread across many independent servers, each with its own character and focus.”

New management tools will help standalone server operators handle maintenance and oversight duties more easily, including the advantage of using external blocklists. The organization will also provide ways to set up content scanning to detect illegal content and spam, along with other tools to reduce media storage usage by remotely serving media posts through a trusted third party.

Additionally, Mastodon will look to attract more content creators, including public figures, journalists and organizations, through a series of updates to its app. To do this, it offers a redesigned user profile that allows individuals to showcase their work as well as an improved authoring experience. There’s also a new email notification option that allows anyone to follow their updates, even if they don’t have a Mastodon account yet. This may attract those who want to follow newsletter writers, reporters, thought leaders and other creatives, while allowing those creatives to reach a broader audience.

The changes come on the heels of the introduction of other new features in recent months, including: Quote postssimilar to the feature found on the X and others, but with more user controls and its own plans Take user recommendations Starter Pack stylenamed Groups.

The updates come on the heels of a shift in leadership at Mastodon: Founder Eugene Rushkow has stepped down as CEO After the platform announced Transition to a non-profit structure At the beginning of the year. In its place, based in Austria Felix Hlatakyassumed the position of Executive Director. In addition to the mastodon Recently announced Hlatki’s duties will be divided with Dr. Marius RothermondCertified German lawyer. Dr. Rothermund will primarily provide legal expertise during the restructuring process, which includes three markets – the United States, Germany and Belgium.