It's our birthday!
A year ago today, the Newsmast app launched in the Fediverse. Introducing curated communities on matters of public interest. From Politics to Photography. Black Voices to Biodiversity. Social Media to Sport.
Newsmast was already a year in the making, inspired, as so much has been, by the fallout from Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.
It's been quite a year, so here's a round up of some of the highlights.
Making friends and allies
Beyond any technical achievements, by far the best thing that has happened is the network of friends and allies we've made.
Laurens Hof from Fediverse Reports was one of the first to notice us, and has supported us throughout the year. Sean and Damon at WeDistribute gave us a warm Fediverse welcome - as did Jeff, Jon and other associates at WeDistribute. Jaz at IFTAS loved our reports on Fediverse Communities. Bart at Mammoth, and now SubClub, spotted what we were doing at the start. Johannes Ernst welcomed us to FediForum, and gave us a speed demo slot. Tim Chambers, an inspirational Fediverse leader, has always been supportive - and we're proud to be working with Tim and the team on the Kamala Harris Win News Group 2.0. Sarah Perez at TechCrunch has covered our work, as has Ernie at Tedium. Ryan Barrett has been open and accessible as we've worked to promote the Bluesky bridge.
More recently we've bonded with some of our fellow social web warriors as we've promoted the Fediverse: Elena Rossini, Anuj Ahooja and the team at Flipboard are wonderful and indefatigable promoters of the broader Fediverse - we're out there together, on every platform. The team at Bluesky gave us a welcome when we set up there - as did some of the leading Feed creators, like Rudy, the BlackSky creator and Ændra at the News Feed.
We've had a lovely, diverse set of regular posters on Newsmast. Australian Geographic, with over a million followers on TikTok, has been a fantastic supporter of our work in the Fediverse. We've loved sharing posts from Serious Feather, Mombian and the Tuesday Review, to name but a few.
And we've had countless likes, boosts and messages of support from people across the Fediverse, both as Newsmast and individually. Personally, I've loved being part of #SilentSunday, scrolling in awe through the images, and posting whenever I can.
For everyone I've missed off this list - we appreciate you too. Thank you everyone!
Building our team
We've been incredibly lucky to build a wonderful team, who've been with us from the beginning. Freddie and Saskia are two of the original members of our Community Team, supported by Andy, Sophie and - although they’re no longer a part of our small team - a host of others we owe thanks to, most recently Oriana and Mariana. On the development side, Lawrence, Aung and the whole development team have thrown themselves into Fediverse development, proving adept at turning new ideas into working software. And we've had unstinting support from our Trustees, Artur and Jeff.
Pioneering new things
We came to the Fediverse looking to bring new things - and we've gone all in!
One of the biggest things we've achieved in the year, which underpins everything we do, is setting up our charity, The Newsmast Foundation. We're one of the few (if not the only) charity dedicated to education through micro-blogging. That informs everything we do, giving us our own perspective and mission.
More highlights include:
- Newsmast, our custom Mastodon server and app, bringing community timelines, and including many features now being rolled out at Bluesky and Farcaster.
- New developments on the app, like Drafting and Scheduling posts and our Amplifier.
- Community Feeds - these timelines turned into accounts, which anyone can follow. "Awesome!" said Mastodon Migration - thank you!
- A plug-in server - enabling anyone to sign in to Newsmast and see their own timeline, lists and follows, alongside the Newsmast Communities.
- Mapping the Fediverse reports - two reports showing the breadth and depth of Fediverse communities, and their counterparts on Bluesky and Threads.
- Support for the Bluesky bridge. We've been avid supporters from the start.
- Patchwork plug-ins, our effort to take all we'd built in our Newsmast Mastodon fork and make more widely accessible. Still in development, so watch this space.
- Patchwork architecture - a radical rethinking of what's possible in the Fediverse, which underpins our development of channels - more open versions of our curated Newsmast communities.
Back to the Future
We're celebrating our birthday with a big upgrade to our Foundation website and our branding across the board. Highlighting what we're going to be working on in the coming year.
All centred around promoting:
- New Social.
- Channel.org, our membership organisation, aimed at onboarding socially minded organisations.
- Custom Channels, our Fediverse version of Bluesky Custom Feeds, available for anyone to build.
- and Communities, working from the bottom up through Newsmast and Patchwork.
Channel.org and Custom Channels are both incredibly close to being ready to launch.
Bringing organisations into the wider New Social universe takes us back to our core, educational mission:
"Advancing education, collective knowledge and the provision of information, news and comment on matters of public interest through the promotion of micro-blogging."
We can't wait to see what the next year brings.