Mastodon Appeals to Journalists with New 'Byline' Feature

Mastodon, the open-source and decentralized social network alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is introducing a new feature aimed at enhancing its appeal to journalists and writers.

Starting Tuesday, Mastodon will add clickable author bylines to link posts, allowing users to connect directly with authors on the fediverse, potentially increasing journalists’ exposure and following.

Unlike the standard @username references, these new bylines will display the news publication’s headline and image, followed by the author’s profile photo and name. This change is designed to make it easier for readers to find and follow their favorite writers.

The feature is initially rolling out to select news publishers, including The Verge, MacStories, and MacRumors, with more to follow. Users on the main Mastodon server at mastodon.social, whether on the web or the official mobile app, will be the first to access these new bylines.

Other servers will need to support the latest Mastodon nightly release and moderator-approved websites to enable the feature.

Mastodon has also made the byline feature available via its API, allowing third-party apps to integrate it in the future. The underlying technology uses a new kind of OpenGraph tag, similar to those used for thumbnail previews on social media.

The tag, which looks like this: `<meta name=”fediverse:creator” content=”@Gargron@mastodon.social” />`, can be easily added to a website with a single line of code.

This feature is versatile, supporting any fediverse account, not just Mastodon. It can link to accounts on platforms like Flipboard, Threads, WordPress (with the ActivityPub plug-in), PeerTube, and Pixelfed. However, it currently supports only a single author per post, which may be expanded in future updates.

Mastodon plans to propose a specification draft for other ActivityPub platforms to adopt this feature. With over 10 million users in the fediverse and around 804,000 active monthly users on Mastodon itself, this new feature could significantly boost journalists’ presence and engagement on the platform.