Alejandro Arrieche
Popular blogging platform Medium is launching its own server on Mastodon to help creators build more loyal communities and to foster discussions about topics that certain audiences consider interesting.
Medium’s head of Product, Alex Benzer, announced the plan in a post published on Monday – the Mastodon server will be named me.dm and, initially, only premium subscribers will have the chance of joining.
The platform has reserved the user names of those who have already signed up for a Medium Membership so they have the chance to enroll in the Mastodon server with that same handle. They will remain reserved until 20 March.
The company plans to work on integrations between its blogging platform and the open-sourced social media, such as creating a button that allows writers to share their new content in a Mastodon post.
Why is Medium Joining the Fediverse?
This move to join the so-called “fediverse” – a term that refers to decentralized solutions powered by federated networks of computers – comes amid the rising popularity of the Twitter-like micro-blogging site.
Medium believes that the fact that the content published within its Mastodon server can be easily propagated to the entire ecosystem, the creation of me.dm opens up new opportunities for authors to get visibility and reach larger audiences.
The cost of a Medium membership is $5 per month and gives readers unlimited access to stories and an ad-free experience.
Some of the money collected from subscriptions is used to compensate the best authors within the platform.
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In an interview with the online tech-focused magazine TechCrunch, the Chief Executive Officer of Medium, Tony Stubblebine, discussed this new product in more detail. He started by emphasizing that it is Medium’s goal is to be “the place to read and write on the internet”.
The head of the blogging platform asserted that some social media platforms have been corrupted by their ad-focused business model as it forces them to engage people with targeted advertising and not content they want to see.
The fact that the platform has put a paywall on its Mastodon server has been controversial and some community members have criticized this decision.
Stubblebine defended the decision by saying that what people are fearing is the possibility that his company will monopolize access to the fediverse somehow.
However, he emphasized, one of the things that make open-sourced platforms like Mastodon so attractive is that there is “no hope for anyone to monopolize it” due to its decentralized nature.
More and more companies are exploring the possibilities of this growing trend. Some prominent examples include Flipboard, the popular news reading app, and Mozilla, the company behind one of the world’s most widely used web browsers.
Elon Musk’s Twitter Was Responsible for Propelling the Fediverse
Mastodon can be partially blamed for popularizing this new movement as the platform became an alternative to Twitter right after Elon Musk took over the micro-blogging platform.
Both advertisers and users have been befuddled by the many changes that Musk has introduced during his relatively short tenure and the consequences that some of his managerial mistakes have had on the platform’s credibility.
Also read: More Layoffs Reported at Twitter despite Elon Musk’s Promise
It has been reported that the company, founded by Jack Dorsey, has experienced a sharp drop of over 70% in its advertising revenues.
More than half of the firm’s employees have been fired, including content moderators and engineers who guaranteed the social media platform’s proper functioning.
Twitter has been suffering multiple outages, glitches, and bugs lately as well and they have contributed to undermining the public’s confidence in the platform.
With all this in mind, it seems that the table is all set for Mastodon’s popularity to keep rising.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alejandro Arrieche.
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