A new Mastodon app called Mammoth has already been downloaded 10,000 times in its first few days of being available on the App Store. The app was built by a team that includes the developer of the Aviary app for Twitter, who was unceremoniously killed off by Twitter earlier this year after new owner Elon Musk decided the wider app ecosystem no longer needed Twitter. third-party clients.
That decision left legacy Twitter apps in the lurch, but led several app developers to turn their attention to the open-source, decentralized social network Mastodon. Last month, for example, the maker of the popular Twitter client Tweetbot launched a new Mastodon app called Ivory after Elon Musk’s API changes wiped out the company’s Twitter-focused predecessor without warning.
Now Mammoth is entering the market to offer users yet another option.
Unlike Ivory, which is an attempt to build a business to offset the losses from Tweetbot’s shutdown, Mammoth is – at least for now – free without any in-app purchases. However, the company has said it eventually plans to offer a subscription version of Mammoth and its community, moth.social, but has not yet decided on the details.
In the meantime, the near-term goal is to encourage adoption of Mastodon, the company explained in a blog post.
Image Credits: Mammoth
“…we don’t think our plan will be a paywall or free users will get a read-only version of the app or moth.social. Simple: we want to help Mastodon have 10 million active users, then 100 million. It’s early days and we don’t want to do anything that slows down adoption,” writes Mammoth co-founder Bart Decrem. “That’s why we’ll probably have a subscription, but it won’t stop you from enjoying the app if you don’t pay. We haven’t worked out all the details or the timing yet.”
At launch, the Mammoth app will provide access to a wide variety of basic features, such as the ability to browse and switch between Mastodon timelines; post content, including text, images, GIFs, polls; use features such as private messages, lists and bookmarks; change the app icon and theme; enable a dark mode; access to multiple accounts; and even undo messages with a custom duration, similar to Twitter. There are plenty of gestures and customization options to make Mammoth feel personalized to you.
Image Credits: Mammoth
The app also has a rich set of less common features such as tools for creating threads, picture-in-picture for pinning messages to your screen, tools for viewing media in AR, tools for sentiment analysis, the ability to reply to hide, translation tools while in composition, and more. As an iOS app, users can take advantage of things like Siri Shortcuts, Face ID and Touch ID, Share Extensions, and VoiceOver support. The app will also be coming to macOS soon, the company notes.
What’s potentially more interesting than all of Mammoth’s bells and whistles is its approach to user onboarding.
It is often said that choosing a server is one of the more difficult parts of setting up on Mastodon. It adds a layer of complexity to the setup process when users expect to just create a username and password as they are used to on other social networks. But joining a server is part of what it means to join Mastodon and the wider group of interconnected servers known as the Fediverse, so it can’t be bypassed.
Image Credits: Mammoth
To make this process easier, Mammoth presents a simplified user interface that guides users through the account setup process, including creating their profile. It also addresses the issue of who to follow on Mastodon by presenting an interface for finding suggested users from different categories – something Twitter used to do as well.
Image Credits: Mammoth
Mammoth launched just a few days ago, but its 10,000 installs indicate that there is still consumer demand for Mastodon apps, despite the competitive landscape with Mastodon’s official client and a number of third-party apps, including the recently launched Ivory from Tap bots.
While consumer interest in Mastodon may have waned since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, interest in the broader Fediverse continues to grow.
Before Musk’s Twitter deal closed, Fediverse — which includes Mastodon and a range of other social apps — had more than 570,000 monthly users. Today, the network has about 2.57 million. Businesses are also starting to take note. The owner of Tumblr has talked about adopting the same protocol that powers Mastodon and Flickr is considering the same. Blog site Medium gained a foothold in Fediverse last month with the launch of its own community.
Mammoth is optimistic about the potential of the Fediverse and that of a decentralized internet in general.
The company says it will open source its code in addition to exploiting its own copy, eventually aiming to make Mastodon easier for the next 10 million users and then the next 100 million. It’s an ambitious goal, given that Twitter itself had only 237.8 million daily active users generating revenue in the last quarter it reported as a public company, compared to Facebook’s 2 billion daily active users as of its most recent earnings. Whether a group of decentralized apps can ever carve out a big enough niche in the shadows of tech giants remains to be seen. But it’s arguably a more promising development than Web3, which has eroded consumer confidence by allowing scammers and pyramid schemes to proliferate.
Mammoth is a free download for iPhone and iPad and coming soon to Mac.