Mastodon looks to newsletters to help revive the open social web

Mastodon, the open, decentralized alternative to Big Tech apps like X and Threads, is betting that email could help solve the open social web’s biggest problem: audience growth.

With the software’s latest release, the social networking platform is introducing email newsletters, a feature that will allow writers to send their posts directly to subscribers’ inboxes, even if those subscribers don’t have or want a Mastodon account.

The feature could allow Mastodon to evolve beyond being just another X alternative, and provides a way for creators to build portable audiences on the decentralized web, reducing their dependence on other social platforms. By tying the functionality to email, a communication system that’s stood the test of time, Mastodon may appeal to those who want to support creators outside of Big Tech ecosystems without requiring them to sign up for a new social network.

The feature is arriving as part of Mastodon 4.6, a broader update that introduced other changes, like refreshed user profiles and support for “Collections” — Mastodon’s take on the user-generated suggested follow lists popularized elsewhere on the social web as “Starter Packs.”

Instead, users can simply enter their email address to start getting updates from the creator. Mastodon’s default post character limit is 500 characters. However, individual server administrators can modify this limit, which means some servers could be set up specifically for the distribution of longer posts.

With newsletters, the company sees the potential for media organizations to join Mastodon, and for independent journalists and bloggers who want to allow anonymous visitors to subscribe to their accounts. The anonymity these subscriptions provide could also encourage sign-ups among those who don’t like to be tracked by newsletter platforms for privacy reasons.

Because Mastodon accounts are portable, creators could still take their audience with them if they ever wanted to move to a new server.

The company explains in a blog post that the new feature, for now, is intended more for its institutional users, referencing its recent move to offer hosting and moderation services to organizations and entities that want to run their own servers.

If adopted, email support could allow Mastodon to grow its footprint beyond the 735,000 monthly active users it sees today, and over a million active accounts on the wider open social web, also known as the fediverse.

There are some caveats to using newsletters on Mastodon, however. Creators who want to take advantage of the feature will need to have an assigned role on the server with the correct permissions, which means either setting up your own server, opting for one hosted by Mastodon, or having a chat with your existing server operator.

The company said it chose not to make newsletters a default feature because sending emails can “significantly rack up the costs of operating a Mastodon server.”