Open Source X Rival Mastodon Begins Raising Funds With New In-app Donation Feature

Open root X and Threads competitor Mastodon will statesman experimenting pinch a caller measurement to raise funds: in-app donations. The statement connected Wednesday announced it’s launching a run that introduces banners wrong its Android and iOS apps, prompting users to make a monetary donation.

Initially, nan characteristic will beryllium shown only to those connected nan Mastodon servers nan nonprofit itself operates, Mastodon.social and Mastodon.online. These banners will beryllium easy to dismiss, Mastodon says, and will only beryllium shown to group who person accounts that person existed for astatine slightest 4 weeks. The statement promises that it won’t continually punctual users to donate, either.

Such campaigns tin activity good for nonprofit organizations astatine scale. Wikimedia Foundation, for example, brings successful nan majority of its backing from individual donors, including those who donate done nan pop-up banners that occasionally look connected Wikipedia. However, Mastodon has a overmuch smaller personification base: 8.1 cardinal registered accounts, and less than 1 cardinal monthly progressive users. Still, nan banners could promote group who haven’t actively sought retired ways to lend to now do so, arsenic it makes nan process much seamless arsenic an in-app feature.

Mastodon says it will later grow nan run to nan web and, if successful, make it disposable to each different Mastodon instances. The second would let individual server admins to person nonstop support from their ain users, which could thief support them operational.

As an open, decentralized societal media platform, Mastodon faces challenges erstwhile it comes to financial support. Unlike Meta and X, which are supported by ads, Mastodon so acold has relied mostly on personification donations from Patreon. It has besides accepted a fistful of donations from open-source-focused costs and foundations complete nan years.

In 2023, Mastodon raised €545K successful full donations, up 65% year-over-year, but its Patreon philanthropist guidelines dropped astir 23% to 7,400. (Its 2024 study is not retired yet.) That diminution could person pushed it to look into much fierce fundraising tactics, particularly arsenic title from Meta and newcomers for illustration nan VC-backed startup Bluesky is growing.

“We cognize that collecting money tin coming complexities and questions,” a Mastodon blog station stated. “We’d for illustration to fig retired really to do this well, together pinch nan community. This is not a firm fundraising campaign: it’s an effort to unafraid nan early of a much ethical and independent societal web.”