This week we saw the rise of the Forkiverse, a run-of-the-mill Mastodon instance spun up by some podcasters. It’s gone pretty well, and I think it speaks to a feature missing from Mastodon.

From Maho Pacheco’s post:

There is also something quietly genius about the idea itself. Podcasts and other large content creators creating their own social platforms, where their audience can interact not just with the hosts but with each other, feels like a natural evolution. This idea has been discussed for years, but rarely tested. It worked. Within 48 hours of releasing their episode, the Forkiverse had already attracted around 2.5K new accounts. That is not just excitement is some kind of proof of demand. Of course, their audience was mostly techie, and they have thousands of followers, which makes this a low digit % conversion, but still, it is interesting.

I agree, though I’d love to point out YET AGAIN that the best way to help build these communities is to offer local-only posts. It’s an obvious feature that Mastodon has not implemented. Why not? The main answer I’ve seen is that it’d be confusing because they already have some confusing post types.

The idea that I think Mastodon developers are failing to capture is that their software is uniquely positioned as the easiest way to create a small, topic-based community (the very best and most successful type in digital and analogue history) that can also engage with the larger world through federation.

That’s where the real power comes from. It’s having easy access to both worlds—posts intended only for members of your own small group, plus the ability to direct other messages out to the broader world.

Imagine if creators could easily share “members-only” content with their followers on a mastodon instance, but could also direct public posts out to the entire fediverse? Their fans can help promote their own forkiverse-style community through simply using the Mastodon instance, interacting with the creators and others in this “select group” of members, but could also interact with all the other accounts out there? That’s golden.

That’s a model that can get existing clubs to join, or maybe a group of friends, or even a sports fanbase, or any other fandom really. The model here is to bring your own existing group to the fediverse, but the best way to do that is to offer “members-only” posts.