mastodon

The big first half of 2024 update

Added 2024-08-06 23:10:19 +0000 UTC

Hey folks,

We know it’s been a while since our last update on here, but we are committed to providing more frequent updates moving forward. As you may know, our core team remains small, without a dedicated communications person. Despite this, we're pooling our efforts across engineering, finance, and operations to keep you regularly informed.

Here's a summary of key developments from the first half of 2024 (we recommend sitting back and grabbing a nice hot/cold drink for this one):

1. Our biggest sponsors

First and foremost, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our major sponsors this year:

Jeff Atwood, for donating $100k with the intention of improving our web UI
Mozilla, for donating $100k, enabling us to increase our team size and capacity
Craig Newmark, for his $50k donation shortly after we established our U.S. non-profit

Equally, we want to extend our thank you’s to each and every one of you for your loyalty and generous contributions over the years which have allowed us to grow and sustain our mission of a free and open social web for everyone.

2. Hiring progress

Thanks to all donations received this year, our team was able to plan for a few more hires.

We re-started our process for a full-time Senior Web Developer position on the 1st of April and filled the role exactly 9 weeks later. David officially joined on 1 July, as the 2nd(!) full-time developer working on the core Mastodon product.
We also came to a conclusion that Eugen and Felix (our CFO) could use additional support when it comes to accounting and legal paperwork, so we opened a part-time Finance & Operations Associate role in May. Can you refer someone to us?
Finally, we're excited to announce that we're also seeking a full-time Senior iOS Developer to lead the development of our official Mastodon iOS app. With numerous improvements planned, we're looking for someone to take ownership of the app and drive it forward. For more information and to apply, click here.

3. Tech update

Given the small size of our tech team, we are doing the best we can to keep building Mastodon. Here are some of the key updates and improvements we worked on in the first half of the year:

Notifications for when you lose followers or people you follow because of a moderator decision on your server, to increase transparency around federation.
Notifications for when a moderator action or warning affects your account directly. Previously these only went to your e-mail, which is easier to miss.
Notification filters that allow you to put messages from new accounts, people you don’t follow, and a couple other conditions into a separate, deprioritized request queue.
Automatic dark/light theme support! This has been often requested, and is now coming to our web interface.
Grouped notifications are another top request that we managed to implement. This required an unexpected large amount of work, but we are now fine-tuning them before the release.
Profile previews on hover. Hover any username to see a compact card with their bio, your private note about them, and a quick follow and unfollow button.
We also released a new author ‘byline’ feature allowing journalists to gain more exposure and increase their following. More on this covered here and from TechCrunch.
Extensive visual updates to the interface, reworking many elements and screens to be more intuitive, user-friendly, and pleasant to the eye.
Server admins can now more easily customize the logo and browser tab icon for their server from the settings, without having to modify code.
You can now not only see news stories that are trending because a lot of people are posting about them, but also browse what people are posting about them. If they opt-in, of course.

And many, many other improvements, touching every aspect of Mastodon. We are currently focusing on the release of Mastodon 4.3, and are aiming to release the first beta version very soon. Expect some blog posts to highlight all the good stuff in the coming weeks!

Last but not least, we launched “Trunk & Tidbits” series - a monthly update from our core engineering team and what’s been happening around the broader community. In case you missed our first three editions, you can catch up on them here:

We appreciate your patience and feedback as we continue to improve our platform!

4. U.S. non-profit status

In April, we have finally established a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity in the United States aimed at facilitating our efforts, to increase our presence in the U.S. market and enable tax-deductible U.S. donations and in-kind support.

We’ve set up a bank account, got a physical office provider, established our Board of Directors and so much more. We realise that for some this might not sound as exciting as a new feature release but it was a large part of the work our team completed in the first half of 2024.

And this feels like a big step forward in our journey. To read more on this, click here.

5. Merch update

To round up, we couldn’t not mention our “latest” merch update - the Mastodon stuffed toy. When we sat down with our artist, Dopatwo - we concluded on only three requirements:

He would have to be cute
He would have to be cuddly, and
He would have to be round.

In case you missed it, the prototype made a perfect travel companion on Eugen’s business trips to New York and San Francisco. The stuffed toy is expected to go on sale at the end of August so keep your eyes peeled or follow us on Mastodon to be the first to know!

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Phew! That’s all for now.

Thank you for reading and we can’t wait to share more updates with you soon. As always, thank you for your unwavering support and for being an integral part of our journey!

— The Mastodon team