The implosion of a popular bird-enthusiasts website left many people scrambling to find their friends on new social media sites like Mastodon. Let’s make sure we can find each other the next time this inevitably happens!
The State of the Open Social Web
A comprehensive look at Mastodon, Bluesky, and the growing ecosystem of open, interoperable social networks.
Mastodon Exit Interview
I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media.
Mastodon - Decentralized social media
Learn more about Mastodon, the radically different, free and open-source decentralized social media platform.
FediFind: Discover the Open Social Web, Your Way
Live search across Mastodon, Flipboard Social and Bluesky. No algorithm, no walls — your keywords become your feed.
How Does Mastodon Work? - Kev Quirk
I’ve spoken about Mastodon numerous times on this blog. It is the social media platform I use more than any other, but for a new user it can be confusing because it doesn’t work like other social media sites.
Mastodon Status Check
My social-media life has been Fediverse-first for a year now. I stick my head into Bluesky and Threads regularly, but visit Twitter rarely if at all. This piece takes a close look at Mastodon-land as things stand in late summer 2023. What’s working, what’s not, what are the alternatives? [Originally published August 2023, updated November 27th for my one-year Twitter-exit anniversary.]
Private and Public Mastodon
Here’s how to get into a lot of trouble: Suppose you (like me) love the intellectual wealth found in free-form text on the Internet. And (like me) are a reasonably competent programmer. And (like me) have derived value and pleasure searching Twitter. And (like me) you look at this nifty new Fediverse thing and see that it has nice Web APIs so you could build an app to vacuum up all the stories and laments and cheers and dunks and love letters and index ’em and let everyone search ’em and find wonderful things! So you lurch into the Mastodon conversation, all excited, and blurt out “Hey folks, I’m gonna index all this stuff and let the world in!” That’s when you get your face torn off.
Connecting the world through thriving online communities
A message from our Executive Director about Mastodon's vision and mission.
Making Social Media Social
As some of you might know, I am part of a team of people moderating a Mastodon server. And as so many of those servers we’ve been having some problems with fake signups lately. This is about how we mitigated the issue and how it was beneficial beyond that. So for those who don’t know […]
Mastodon is dead in the water | HackerNoon
Like many others, I had a fun time on mastodon.social this weekend. Many <a href="https://mastodon.social/@five" target="_blank">great</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@puellavulnerata" target="_blank">people</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@sonya" target="_blank">from</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@ultimape" target="_blank">Twitter</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@chenoehart" target="_blank">showed</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@jdegoes" target="_blank">up</a>, as well as <a href="https://mastodon.social/@brendaneich" target="_blank">other</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@bcrypt" target="_blank">generally</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@auerbach" target="_blank">cool</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@thegrugq" target="_blank">and</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@meaningness" target="_blank">famous</a>-<a href="https://mastodon.social/@davatron5000" target="_blank">ish</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/@aral" target="_blank">people</a>.
Coho
Discover a simpler way to socialize online with Coho, the Mastodon app that prioritizes ease-of-use and clean design. Experience the open-source, decentralized social network without the clutter. Join communities, share your thoughts, and connect with like-minded individuals all with just a few taps. Say goodbye to overwhelming feeds and complicated features, Coho simplifies the social media experience.
Semble: Collective knowledge foraging in trail-based social networks beyond feeds (Lightning Talk)
blogs.social — Discover the open web
Discover and follow blogs across Bluesky, Mastodon, RSS, and the open social web.
Today, we're launching the ability to Bounce from Mastodon to any Atmosphere PDS you have access to, whether it be @blackskyweb.xyz, @eurosky.social, @transrights.northsky.social, @selfhosted.social, or even your self-hosted option! You can also bring an invite code when necessary 🎟️ 1/
Bounce Update: PDS Provider Migrations
blog.anew.social