What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a microblogging platform and one of the Fediverse's replacement for Twitter.

Mastodon logo

Official

Website: joinmastodon

Official instances: mastodon.social
mastodon.online

List of instances: joinmastodon/communities

Forum: discourse joinmastodon

What does Mastodon feel like?

What are some advantages over Twitter?

	Twitter	Mastodon
character limit	280	500
feed	algorithmic	chronological
reach	far	familiar

What are some limitations?

With all the advantages, like Twitter, Mastodon still has some limitations.

Some things that are fixed and the admins can't change for their instances:

character limit (500)
poll options (4)
profile fields (4)
max number of pinned posts (5)
...

What are Mastodon forks and why use them?

A fork is a derivative software. So Mastodon forks are software based on Mastodon.
They look and feel mostly like Mastodon, but usually have some extra features that e.g. address some of the limitations mentioned above.

Ecko

Main artilce: What is Ecko?

Ecko is a Mastodon fork that has a lot of cool features.
Admins can change the limits on post characters, poll options & profile fields.
So on an Ecko instance you might e.g. have a 5000 character limit for posts and can create polls with 10 options.

Furthermore local posts are possible. Meaning posts only other users of the same instance can see. This might strengthen the community spirit.

External Links

Guides

What is Mastodon (video)
Getting started with Mastodon
Guide to Mastodon
Mastodon: Friendly Microblogging