13 Nov How to Join Mastodon, a Step-by-Step Guide

If you’ve noticed in recent days, book and media Twitter is in migration, like the mastodons of old. And where are they migrating to, you ask? To Mastodon! Eugen, the founder of Mastodon reported that Mastodon has acquired over one million new active users in the last two weeks! You can learn all about what Mastodon is and why people are “herding” there, ha! In this article over at the New York Times, we won’t go into all of that here. This is a straight and simple guide to how to join Mastodon. Having just signed up ourselves, there were a couple things that weren’t entirely clear or easy in the joining process. We thought it might be helpful to the community to create a short step-by-step on how to get started.

We found this easier to do on a website than in the Mastodon app and these instructions are for in a computer browser. What makes Mastodon a little tricky is the server part. Mastodon is a diversified platform hosted by community servers all over the world. You can choose any server and you can change servers but for newbies, we recommend finding one and sticking with it. Once you are on a server, you can see people everywhere within Mastodon. You are not limited to viewing messages from people on your server. If you join a server you don’t like from the get-go and don’t have any followers yet, just start another account on a server you prefer. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

Mastodon Quick Start Guide

1. Go to https://mastodon.online/explore

2. On the right side, you will see a “create account” button.

3. Pick the @mastodon.online server or a different one

4. If you want a different server, select “Find Another Server.” This will take you to a page with a selection of different servers. This page only offers you a very limited group of servers.

How to find other servers:

1. 1. 1. https://instances.social/ asks you a few questions about your preferences and then serves you a list of possible servers (also known as instances) for you to choose from.
      2. GitHub has a huge list of servers.
      3. Or you can just join us over on mas.to one of the biggest general servers.

A few tips about servers:

1. 1. 1. There are open servers and servers you have to apply to.
      2. If you’re a journalist, consider: https://journa.host/about, https://newsie.social/about, or https://mastodonmedia.xyz/ 
      3. Many writers are joining: https://writing.exchange/about

5. Choose your server.

6. Sign Up. We recommend using the same handle across social networks if you can.

7. You will receive a confirmation to the email you signed up with. Click the “Confirm and Return to Mastodon” button and you are ready to roll.

How to find your friends

Now you ask, how do I find my Twitter friends? Wired has a good article on this, that gives you a few options. Also, pay attention to Twitter. People are sharing their new Mastodon accounts all the time, putting them in their bios or as their names. When sharing your account, send the link, not the email address-looking thing. For example, you can follow Sarah here: https://mas.to/@sarahrusso or Page One Media here: https://mas.to/@pageonem.

Now you know how to join Mastodon! We hope you give us a follow and see you there!

Sarah Russo is the founder of Page One Media. She’s been working in publishing for twenty-three years. You can connect with her on Twitter @sarahrusso, Instagram, Mastodon, and LinkedIn. You can follow the work of our company on LinkedIn, @pageonem on Twitter, Mastodon, Instagram.