Medium, an online publishing platform founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, has officially stated that it’ll now use the Mastodon platform.
The business announced the rollout of me.dm, a mastodon network that’ll provide a short domain name, solid infrastructure, and moderation to simplify the process for writers to share their usernames, among other things.
Medium has decided to set up its instance of Mastodon, considering the open-source platform as a positive development in the social media industry.
Despite being invite-only, the business wants to offer a better user experience than other Mastodon servers by offering a strong infrastructure and other extra features.
Medium will make Mastodon available to their readers and writers as an added benefit of Medium membership. This will consequently generate a forum for debates over Medium’s content. Thus, developing into a fascinating local feed.
With this, joining the microblogging platform on Medium will have a “sign up with Medium” experience. It’ll respond to various issues about the platform’s start-up challenges, and it might increase the number of readers on Medium.
Mastodon Grows in Popularity
A majority of Twitter users are now looking for alternative platforms where they can share their opinions and participate in public debates. One of the platforms that benefited immediately was Mastodon.
According to recent data, the site now has 2.5 million monthly active users, up from only 300,000 in October 2022. In contrast to Twitter, Mastodon allows users to join communities, each with its own set of rules, personal timelines, and policies for moderation.
Mastodon receiving support from Medium is a massive vote of confidence for the network, whose active user count had fallen 30% since early December when it reached a peak of over 2.5 million users. Me.dm currently has 571 users who are actively using it.
As Medium now has a network of over 100 million readers, launching a Medium instance could help Mastodon further increase its user base.
Even if only a few individuals joined Medium’s Mastodon, it might mean a massive wave of new “fediverse” users, as the networked Mastodon servers are known.
It’s not just Medium that’s realized the need for a Twitter alternative. Within its own app, Substack added a discussion feature. Flipboard introduced a Notes feature with a similar goal in December 2022.
In November 2022, Tumblr declared it would implement ActivityPub, a peer-to-peer social networking platform competing with Mastodon. The Mozilla foundation also plans to create its Mastodon instance in early 2023 in addition to Medium.
The nonprofit stated last month that its goal is to promote the long-term and healthy growth of a federated network that not only exists but thrives on its own terms, independent of control- and profit-motivated tech firms.
Mastodon, the Emerging Alternative to Twitter
Mastodon was created six years ago, but it’s only recently grown in popularity as users leave Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Musk has made various questionable choices since acquiring the social network, including reinstating the accounts of former President Donald Trump and other white nationalists and suspending journalists while cutting up Twitter’s content moderation teams.
It’s no secret that Twitter has experienced many issues because of its increased user growth and a crackdown on fake accounts. This has caused the site’s user growth to slow down. It also blocked a few well-known accounts.
With that, the business continues to battle to retain its customers.