Join Mastodon with Medium

We’re opening me.dm to all Medium members

“A mastodon reading a newspaper at a cafe in the style of Gustav Klimt” (via DALL-E)

A few weeks ago, we announced that Medium is embracing short-form writing by launching our very own Mastodon server at me.dm. Starting today, we’re opening up me.dm access for our member community. If you’re a Medium member, you can create an account on me.dm.

What’s Mastodon?

Mastodon is a social media platform that’s different from the others: it’s not owned by any one entity. Mastodon is a network of servers (or “instances”) that are each hosted and moderated by their respective owners. If you like Medium and our approach to content moderation, we hope you’ll join us on me.dm.

Posts on Mastodon are federated, meaning that they have the potential to be seen and re-shared by anyone in the entire network. We think this presents an exciting new opportunity for writers to reach more readers.

What you’ll get when you join me.dm

1. A fresh, short Mastodon username like @you@me.dm that matches your Medium profile.
2. An easy way to share your own Medium stories or short-form thoughts to millions of potential readers on the Mastodon network.
3. Access to a fast, stable, professionally-operated Mastodon instance.
4. A great local feed featuring posts from fellow Medium writers and readers.
5. Hand-picked recommendations for interesting people to follow on Mastodon.

How to create your me.dm account

The regular process for joining Mastodon and building your profile can be a bit confusing, so we’ve made it easier by integrating it with your Medium account.

• If you’re already a Medium member, you can create your me.dm account right away.
• If you’re not yet a member, you can start your Medium membership to join me.dm.
• After that, you’ll log into me.dm directly with the new password you set when you created the account.
• Once you’re on me.dm, you’ll see that your profile information on Medium has been copied over to your new profile on me.dm.

A note on usernames

For now, we’ve reserved your Medium username on me.dm so you’ll have an opportunity to register it before anyone else. For example, if your Medium name is “yourname”, your me.dm username will be @yourname@me.dm.

This reservation will expire after March 23th, at which time Medium members will be allowed to register any available me.dm username. So if you want to ensure that you have the same username on Medium and me.dm, we recommend creating your account right away.

Getting started on Mastodon

We’ve put together a getting started list that can help you get oriented and make the most of Mastodon. If you’ve used Twitter before, Mastodon should feel pretty familiar. If you have questions, just give a shout to our team account @medium.

What’s coming next

In the coming weeks, we’ll continue working to improve the experience on me.dm and explore potential integrations with Medium. For instance, we may add a “Share to Mastodon” button to the story page on Medium, making it easier for Mastodon users to share Medium stories to the fediverse.

In the meantime, we’re looking for your feedback. Let us know what you think of me.dm so far and what you’d like to see in the future.

Looking forward to seeing you in the community. You’ll find me at @alex — say hi!