Mastodon, the open-source decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is out trader A new feature aims to make the app more appealing to those who use it to keep up with news and information from writers and journalists. Starting Tuesday, the company is adding clickable author tags in posts with links that can direct Mastodon users to the author’s fediverse account, if it’s active, in turn allowing journalists to get more exposure and grow their following.
The new titles go beyond the typical @username mentions that often accompany link posts from news publications and those that point to other written content, like a WordPress blog or Substack. Instead, the change will include the news publication title and image followed by another mention below that includes the author’s profile picture and name.
The feature has already been rolled out to a select number of news publishers, including The Verge, MacStories, and MacRumors. (We’re told it’s in the queue here at TechCrunch, too!)
To access these new lines, you will need to use the main Mastodon server on Mastodon.Social Either on the web or in an official mobile app, for now. If you’re using another Mastodon server, it will need to support the latest Mastodon nightly release, but the feature will only work with admin-approved websites.
The company says the new sub-fonts will also be supported by its API, making it possible for third-party apps to support the extension in the future.
Mastodon says the innovation driving this feature in the background is a new type of OpenGraph markup. These are the same marks you can use on your website that help determine what type of thumbnail appears next to a page preview when shared to other services, like Mastodon, iMessage, Discord, and more.
This tag looks like this: ‘‘. It can be added to the site with a simple line of code, making its implementation fairly simple.
The handle in the tag can also point to any fediverse account, not just Mastodon. That means it can point to accounts on Flipboard, Threads, WordPress (with the ActivityPub plugin installed), PeerTube, Pixelfed, and more. Plus, it will work without the @ symbol in the handle, Mastodon says.
One caveat, however, is that this program does not yet support multiple authors in shared line writing situations; only the first author will appear. However, this issue may be addressed in a future release.
Mastodon says it will propose draft specifications for other ActivityPub platforms in the coming weeks.
Adding the tag may encourage more journalists to increase their use of the federal social network, as it will help them gain notoriety. More than 10 million usersnot counting Threads (which has 170 million monthly users but is not fully federated). Mastodon, specifically, has about 804,000 monthly active.