Mastodona decentralized, open-source social networking platform and alternative to larger apps like X and Threads, announced on Wednesday plans to make its app more accessible to newcomers while also targeting creators with the release of new features.
The changes follow the expansion of Mastodon’s core development team over the past 18 months to include people with web and mobile and backend experience, as well as the hiring of a dedicated designer, according to a new blog post co-authored by Mastodon Technical Director Renaud Chaput and Product Designer Imani Joy. The post outlines the future direction of the app.
The app, which is part of the fediverse — a larger, decentralized social web that runs on the ActivityPub protocol — came back into the limelight when Elon Musk bought Twitter, now called X, in October 2022. Since then, it has seen occasional growth spurts, but often struggles to retain new users due to its more complex setup. At Mastodon, you don’t just create an account with a username and password. you also have to choose a server to join — an extra 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. A third party tracker puts the number closer to 750,000, while another estimates as many as many 1 million. The Mastodon site he says the number is about 785,000.
As part of its upcoming updates, the organization says it will try to make this onboarding process easier to understand while promoting smaller servers.
To date, new users often opt for the largest servers, but this undermines the power of a decentralized web. As the blog post notes, “Mastodon is best when communities are spread across multiple independent servers, each with its own character and focus.”
New management tools will help independent server operators handle maintenance and monitoring tasks more easily, including an ability to use external blocklists. The organization will also offer ways to configure content scanning to detect 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 attract more content creators, including public figures, journalists and foundations, with a series of updates to its app. To do this, it introduces a redesigned user profile that allows people to showcase their work as well as an improved composing experience. Also in the works is a new email notification option that will allow someone to track their updates, even if they don’t have a Mastodon account yet. This could appeal to those who want to follow newsletter editors, 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 offer posts, similar to the feature in X and others but with more user controls, and plans for its own Starter Pack-style response to user suggestions, called Collections.
The updates follow a leadership change at Mastodon: founder Eugen Rochko stepped down as CEO after the platform announced its transition to a non-profit structure earlier this year. In its place, based in Austria Felix Hlatky took over as executive director. Plus, Mastodon recently announced will split Hlatky’s duties with Dr. Marius Rothermundcertified German lawyer. Dr. Rothermund will primarily provide legal expertise during the restructuring, which includes three markets — the US, Germany and Belgium.
