Mastodonthe open, decentralized alternative to Big Tech apps like X and Threads, is betting that email could help solve the open social web’s biggest problem: audience growth.
With the latest version of the software, the social networking platform is introducing email newsletters, a feature that will allow authors to send their posts directly to subscribers’ inboxes, even if those subscribers don’t have or want a Mastodon account.
The feature could allow Mastodon to evolve beyond just another X alternative and provide a way for creators to build portable audiences on the decentralized web, reducing their reliance on other social platforms. By combining functionality with email, a communication system that has stood the test of time, Mastodon can appeal to those who want to support creators outside of Big Tech ecosystems without requiring them to sign up for a new social network.
The feature reaches up to part of Mastodon 4.6a broader update that introduced other changes, such as revamped user profiles and support for “Collections” — Mastodon’s take on suggested user-generated watchlists spread elsewhere on the social web as “Starter Packs.”
Instead, users can simply enter their email address to start receiving updates from the creator. Mastodon’s default post character limit is 500 characters. However, individual server administrators can modify this limit, which means that some servers could be set up specifically to distribute larger posts.
With newsletters, the company sees potential for media organizations to join Mastodon and for freelance journalists and bloggers who want to allow anonymous visitors to join their accounts. The anonymity these subscriptions provide could also encourage signups among those who don’t like being tracked by newsletter platforms for privacy reasons.
Because Mastodon accounts are portable, creators could still take their audience with them if they ever wanted to move to a new server.
The company explains in a blog post that the new feature, for now, is intended more for its institutional users, citing its recent move to offer hosting and monitoring services to organizations and entities that want to run their own servers.
If approved, email support could allow Mastodon to grow its footprint beyond that 735,000 monthly active users sees today, under a peak of over 2 million just a few years ago. The wider open social web, known as the fediverse, has over a million active accounts.
However, there are some caveats to using newsletters on Mastodon. Creators who want to take advantage of the feature will need to have an assigned role on the server with the correct permissions, which means either setting up your own server, choosing one hosted by Mastodon, or chatting with your existing server operator.
The company said it chose not to make newsletters a default feature because sending emails can “significantly increase the cost of running a Mastodon server.”
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