Open source x and filament competitor Mastodon begin to try a new way of raising funds: internal donations of the application. The organization, organized on Wednesday, announced that it would launch a campaign that presents banners within its Android and iOS applications and urges users to make a donation.
Initially, the feature is shown only to people on the Mastodon servers who actually non -profit organization operates, mastodon.social and mastodon.online. These banners are easy to dismiss, Mastodon says, and they are shown only to people with accounts that exist for at least four weeks. The organization promises that it does not constantly urge users to donate.
Such campaigns can work well for non -profit organizations on a scale. For example, the Wikimedia Foundation brings majority Its funding from individual donors, including those who donate through pop-up banners, who sometimes appear on Wikipedia. However, Mastodon has a much smaller user base: 8.1 million incorporated Accounts and less than one million monthly active users. Still, banners could encourage people who have not been actively looking for ways to participate now because it makes the process an internal feature of a seamless application.
Mastodon says it will later expand the campaign to the network and make it successful for all other casaston cases. The latter would allow individual server administrators to receive direct support from their own users, which could help keep them in operation.
As an open, decentralized social media platform, Mastodon faces challenges in financial support. Unlike meta and x, which are supported by advertisements, Mastodon has so far been largely trusted by Patreon’s user donations. It has also approved a handful of donations from the open source’s concentrated funds and basics over the years.
Internal- 2023Mastodon raised € 545,000, which is 65% more than the previous year, but its Patreon donor base dropped by almost 23% to 7,400. .
“We know that raising money can present the complexity and questions,” Mastodon’s blog post said. “We want to find out how this is done well with the community. This is not a corporate collection campaign: it is an attempt to ensure the future of an ethical and independent social network.”
