Last Quarter in the Fediverse, Q1 2023

Welcome to the first edition of Last Quarter in the Fediverse, a quarterly summary of the major news events that have happened regarding the fediverse.

In no particular order:

• Growth and news
• Third party web clients
• Governments and the fediverse
• Corporations joining the fediverse
• Three major new iOS apps for Mastodon

Let's dive right in!

Growth and news

The last quarter of 2022 was dominated by the explosive growth of the fediverse, dubbed the #twittermigration. This sudden and large inflow mainly happened in November 2022, and slowly growth has dropped back to levels that are more consistent with pre-November 2022, although at a higher base level. Even though the rate at which new users stayed with the network was high, the incredibly large November 2022 inflow made sure that the necessary drop also looked high. This prompted a minor news cycle about how Mastodon was an 'also-ran' social network that did not manage to kill Twitter.

Mastodon reached 10 million accounts in March 2023, indicating a solid strenght of growth underneath the drop in active user count. The accurary of the measurement is of some dispute, as different data sources provide different numbers, with no consensus on accuracy. The growth itself is not disputed, and further confirmed by the fact that it will only take roughly a month to grow to 11 million accounts.

The November 2022 inflow of users came with a discussion if and how news organisations could and should join the fediverse. By and large, this has not played out over the last three months, with no new major national news outlet joining. Instead it were some local news organisations who gathered a major following on the fediverse. Notable examples include the Texas Observer and Boston's GBH News. A few magazines such as The Markup and Dame Magazine have also managed to settle and find a significant audience.

The bottom-up, grassroots approach of journalism on the fediverse is apparent in projects such as #newstodon. An initiative of the earlier mentioned local news organisations and magazines, they banded together to share their best news stories every Friday under the #newstodon hashtag. Another approach to journalism and the news that launched this quarter is verifiedjournalist.org, which provides verification and discovery for individual journalists.

Third party web clients

Third party clients have attained a new level of professionalism in the last quarter, and with it, a significant boost in popularity. Web clients are a way to log in to Mastodon (to a lesser degree, other software such as Pleroma is also supported), and gives you a completely new user interface. If you have not done so already, it is highly recommended to check them out.

Early January saw the launch of elk.zone. Elk is likely the most popular web client, and focuses on a fully featured client that provides all the options. Its design feels more familiar to Twitter users, even though it is distinctive in it's own way. It is a fairly large and sophisticated project, with four main contributors, a fundraiser, and corporate sponsers.

Phanpy.social is another web client that really started development in this quarter. It is more opinionated and minimalistic. One of the more notable features is the ´boost carousel´, where boosted posts are in a separate part of the timeline, easily distinguisable. It also supports multi-column layout in various ways.

Other notable web clients currently in use are trunks.social, Mastodeck and sephamore, but they seem to have significantly less cultural cache than Elk and Phanpy have.

Governments and the fediverse

Much has been written about Twitter's new tumultuous relationship with the press, government and reality in general, and whether governments can still depend on Twitter for their social media strategy. The European Union already set up their own Mastodon presence back in April 2022, with the EU Voice project. The German government started their social.bund.de Mastodon server even earlier, back in 2022. Even with these examples, and the ample though pieces about Twitter dependency, no significant signalling by other major governments towards the fediverse have been made.

There have been some moves toward it in specific places. The entire Dutch higher education system is part of a system that has enabled and integrated a Mastodon server, with almost 30 institutes signed up now, including the major universities. The city of Amsterdam also set up their own Mastodon server, and the German government is still expanding the number of agencies on their server.

Corporations joining the fediverse

A number of tech companies have joined the fediverse in the last few months, and the reception has been very positive. Medium, Automattic and Flipboard have all joined the fediverse in their own way.

Fediverse culture is notably critical of Big Tech companies, which goes beyond a counter reaction to Twitter. There is a huge distrust of companies like Meta and Google. In that context, the positive reaction to these (smaller) companies joining the fediverse stands out. While these companies where already rated more trustworthy beforehand, their approach is notable in how measured and careful it has been. CEO's have engaged on a personal level in order to find out how to best approach and connect with current fediverse culture.

Blogging site Medium have set up their own Mastodon server, me.dm. This came after a period in which CEO Tony Stubblebine actively got involved with the fediverse on how to approach moderation and the place of Medium. They settled on their own server that is specifically for paying Medium subscribers, and advertise their (pretty cool) domain name as another selling point.

Already in December 2022, browser Vivaldi set up their own Mastodon server, and even integrated it directly into their browser. Mozilla is set to catch up, and announced that they will also set up their own mozilla.social server that integrates with Firefox single sign on accounts. That feature remains in closed testing however.

Flipboard integrated Mastodon into their app, which allows you to browse your Mastodon content in your flipboard magazines. It also allows you to comment and favorite Mastodon posts that you see in your Flipboard app. The other direction also works, sharing Flipboard content with Mastodon. Flipboard's trajectory has been interesting to see, as it feels likely that other products might also follow a similar path: start with an iOS app that has a bare minimum Mastodon integration, expand to an Android app that also has a Mastodon integration, realize the power of this, and fully commit to an ActivityPub integration that goes beyond just Mastodon. Flipboard is planning to add full ActivityPub integration in the coming months.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, acquired the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, with the developer also joining the company. Automattic has indicated their interest in the fediverse earlier, and is still considering if and how to implement ActivityPub on Tumblr. Their acquisition of the WordPress plugin for ActivityPub demonstrates their continued commitment, and it will be interesting to see how this develops further.

Early March news broke that Meta has some early plans to decentralized text-based social network that uses Activitypub. The plan is still in it's earliest stages, with not much known about it, besides that it likely uses Instagram credentials and it seems focused on allowing creators to send out updates. Response to this news fell roughly along two lines: a validation of the power of federated social networks, and the threat of an Embrace-Extend-Extinguish action by Big Tech companies.

3rd party apps, on iOS

Last three months have seen a massive inflow of new 3rd party apps, mainly for iOS. While there were iOS apps available already, none have had the impact that the new apps have had. There are three major new apps for iOS, each with a distinctly different approach. It is just as notable that there has not been an Android app that has managed to get the attention and cultural impact that these iOS apps have managed to gather.

Ivory is an iOS only app, created by the small company Tapbots, that comes with a 2.99 USD/month subscription fee. Tapbots is the created of beloved Twitter client Tweetbot. Twitter shut down 3rd party clients in January this year, which dominated the news cycle. Tapbot's Ivory release came at the perfect moment for this: their original business for Tweetbot was suddenly shut down due to the controversial Twitter changes, which generated them a lot of goodwill. People trust Tapbot, and their skill in making apps that are enjoyable to use. Ivory delivers on that promise, and large tech news outlets paid significant attention to this, with major coverage in The Verge, TechCrunch and Mashable.

Ice Cubes took the open source route. It also released this January and quickly demonstrated that a free app made by a single developer could easily match the new standard set by Ivory. Ice Cubes has repeatedly pushed the boundaries by adding new features that other apps do not have. It was one of the first that allows you to easily read the local timelines of other homeservers, for example.

Mammoth is another iOS only app that launched late February. It stands out (and caused some controversy at launch), by being build by a small startup company backed by VC funds. The grassroots open-source history of the fediverse led to friction in expectations in culture, when people felt that Venture Capital has joined the fediverse. The primary backer of Mammoth is Mozilla, which helps placate some of the fear, but does not fully take it away, considering other backers are Salesforce's tech billionaire Marc Benioff. Mammoth focuses on a smooth signup flow, allowing new users to sign up directly for their own instance, moth.social. As of now, Mammoth does not have a revenue model, but says they will be experimenting with an optional subscription model.

This does not even mention great apps like Mona, a pay-once app for both Mac and iOS. It focuses on customization as well, with the added benefit over the other apps that it supports Mac as well.