Medium, the online publishing platform founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams launched its own Mastodon instance, me.dm. The company aims to provide a better experience than other Mastodon servers by providing a solid infrastructure and other extra features, though me.dm is currently invite-only.

Mastodon is a decentralized social network where users can choose to join any server but still follow people on other servers. This “fediverse” aspect definitely has its advantages, though there’s quite a learning curve for people used to centralized social networks such as Twitter or Instagram.

“With so many Mastodon instances to choose from, we plan for me.dm to have a few important benefits out of the gate: reliable infrastructure and moderation, a short domain name to make sharing your username easier, better onboarding for new users, and an interesting local feed,” explained Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine.

For now, Medium has started inviting select authors and publications to join its Mastodon instance, and the company plans to follow up by inviting all Medium writers and readers on me.dm. Other people can still join a waitlist to get access to the instance, and all Mastodon users can also follow the official Medium account on me.dm/@medium.

“We are working on a “sign-up with Medium” option that will make it easy to get started on Mastodon, and to find people and topics that match your interests. Medium embracing Mastodon is a big vote of confidence for the platform which saw its number of active users drop 30% since its usage peaked at over 2.5 million users in early December. As of this writing, me.dm has 571 active users.

In addition to Medium, the Mozilla foundation plans to launch its own Mastodon instance in early 2023. “Our intention is to contribute to the healthy and sustainable growth of a federated social space that doesn’t just operate but thrives on its own terms, independent of profit- and control-motivated tech firms,” the organization announced last month.