Medium has announced it is creating its own Mastodon instance, embracing what has emerged as a viable rival to Twitter.

Mastodon is an open source microblogging platform, very similar to Twitter in most respects. One big difference is how people sign up. Rather than a centralized server, companies and organizations can host their own instance, or Mastodon server, to sponsor communities of like-minded individuals. Once a person signs up, however, they can follow and interact with users across all the various instances, as part of what’s known as the “Fediverse.”

Medium has decided to host its own Mastodon instance, seeing the open source network as a positive development in the social media space.

Today, Medium is launching a Mastodon instance at me.dm to help our authors, publications and readers find a home in the fediverse. Mastodon is an emerging force for good in social media and we are excited to join this community.

Mastodon saw a huge uptick in traffic following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. While the platform has lost some of those gains in recent weeks, it still stands as the best alternative to Twitter. As more companies embrace it, Mastodon could one day become a far better option than Twitter in every respect.

For the latest tech news, you can follow this writer on Mastodon here: https://journa.host/@mattmilano