One of the best things about Mastodon is the sheer number of apps available. The official Mastodon app is good enough, but there are also Ivory, Mona, Fedilab, Ice Cubes, Elk, Mastoot, and more. This openness is part of the overall appeal of the social networking ecosystem powered by ActivityPub, and it’s already led to some solid new ideas. (I’ve personally been a very happy Ivory user for a while.)
Mammoth gained some fans earlier this year with its very well-designed Mastodon client, and has since added a “For You” feed that personalizes Mammoth a little more automatically. Now, with the release of his Mammoth 2 for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, the app deepens its curation and personalization even further. We’re starting a series of “smart lists” filled with great posts and sets of people and accounts to follow. , more.
Smart lists are a lot like old Twitter lists. Users can curate groups of people based on topics, interests, etc., and others can subscribe to those lists. Mammoth has dozens of pieces of content so far, from “Space” and “Nature” to “Indieweb” and “Queertech,” each curated by a specific Mammoth user. I’ve been beta testing the app for the past few days, and the list is useful, if not exactly mind-blowing. Most of the lists include his website or famous posters, so it’s more of a starting point than a long-term solution.
Mammoth co-founder Bart Decrem says he wants to combine this human curation with automated curation, even post-by-post, with the help of AI. “I would have been surprised in a way if he hadn’t used AI to organize and create smart lists,” he says. But he also knows that AI begets more AI, and he doesn’t want to introduce bots that abuse the system or encourage people to flood their posts with hashtags. “I think what Mastodon is meant to represent is that in a world full of things that we don’t know where they come from, I know where this comes from.”
Decrem said one of Mammoth’s goals continues to be to make it easy to get started with Mastodon. Although the default process has improved over time, it’s still a lot of work to choose a server, sign up, find people, and adjust the timeline to your liking. It’s too much for some people. “You need to provide interesting content to people in under a minute,” Decrem says. “I’m sure they’re doing something interesting with it.” He says Threads keeps your timeline vibrant by showing you who you don’t follow, making it easy to follow them. I’m interested in some ways to do so.
The new app is free, but you can also pay $3 per month or $20 per year for additional app icons, early access to new features, and participation in Mammoth’s product roadmap. Decrem mainly wants this to be a way to support something you love. “The superpower of Mastodon and the Fediverse is that it’s a community, right?” As a way of giving back to that community, Mammoth is committed to open sourcing its apps and being transparent about everything it builds. Masu.
Mammoth will forever be more than just a Mastodon app. For example, Decrem is very excited about the possibility of Threads adopting his ActivityPub, and he thinks of many ways Mammoth could do better than the Threads algorithm, which many users dislike. In general, he has said that he sees this app as a way to explore the entire Federation, whether it’s Mastodon, he’s Pixelfed, or anywhere else. Mammoth’s job is to curate and personalize all these feeds so there’s always something good to scroll through.