Use “tusks” to Turn Mastodon Into a Linked Blog
Threading is an art form. Replying to your own posts allows you to gather a bunch of information in one place or continue to comment on what’s going on. Threading is also very clunky: you have to dig up your own messages and respond to them.
Tusks is a Mac and iOS app for Mastodon users who really, really enjoy creating themes. This app from independent developer Third Culture Apps turns any Mastodon account into a private blog of sorts. The app is for posting only: you can’t view your feed and you can’t see replies. What you can do is go through your own posts, view them by topic, and add additional replies. This is not a replacement for the full Mastodon client – it is a purpose-built tool for creating streams.
Open the app and you’ll see all your latest posts in the left sidebar. You can click on any of them to expand it into a thread with a reply box that you can use to add more replies. There are some nice features for organizing your themes. You can give them a name that is visible only to you. You can also pin the topics you visit most often and find them in one place.
I’ve used this on several topics over the past week and love how it makes me think about my own writing. Without Tusks, it’s very easy to quickly post so you can go back to your timeline and read other people’s stuff. This app eliminates that impulse because it’s designed for just one thing: writing.
Not everyone will want this, and that’s okay. The wealth of tools available is part of what made Twitter interesting in the early 2010s, when designers took advantage of the network’s generous API to reimagine what online communication could look like. I remember there were several tools for creating threads. Twitter, now called X, is less a social network and more a midlife crisis these days, and the changes made to the API a couple of years ago destroyed that ecosystem. It’s nice to see some of that spirit coming back elsewhere.
The free version of Tusks can be used for drawing, but not for publishing; the paid version currently costs $5, but according to the developer, this price will increase over time. If you like this idea, I recommend trying it now.