Sneak peak: the state of the fediverse Q1 2023

Welcome to my newsletter subscribers! Here's a quick sneak peak to my project that will release next week: a summary of all the news that has happened in the last three months.

The final article will include more subjects, but here is a first look at three of them: the rise of 3rd party iOS apps, the rise of the web client, and how governments have approached Mastodon.

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.

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 is a free iOS only, that took the open source route. It also released this January, and it soon showed that a free app made by a single developer could easily hold up to the new standard that Ivory had set. 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 a 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.

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 its distincively different. 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 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.