Mastodon, the decentralized open source alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is adding a new feature that will make the app more appealing to those who use it as a tracking service for news and information dispensed by writers and journalists. From Tuesday, the company is adding clickable bylines on link posts that can send Mastodon users to the author's account on the fediverse if they are active, opening further opportunities for journalists to gain more exposure and expand their following.

New bylines go a step beyond the usual @username references accompanying link posts from news pubs and any linking to other written content, such as to a WordPress blog or Substack. Instead, the change will feature the headline from the news publication's with an image alongside another reference underneath including the author's profile photo and name.

This feature is already beginning to roll out to selected news publishers, including The Verge, MacStories, and MacRumors. (It's in the queue here at TechCrunch as well, we're told!)

To get at these new bylines, you'll have to use the main Mastodon server (by way of users) at mastodon.social, either on the web or in an official mobile app, at least for now. Ideally, if you're using another Mastodon server, it will need to support the recent Mastodon nightly release, but the feature will work only on approved websites.

The company has also indicated that the new bylines will be backed through its API, allowing the third party application to back the addition moving forward.

On the back end, it's a new sort of OpenGraph tag, Mastodon claims. These are like the same sort of tags you'd have on your web site to help determine what sort of thumbnail image might appear alongside the preview for the page when shared to other services, like Mastodon, iMessage, Discord, and more.

This tag looks like this: '<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="@Gargron@mastodon.social" />'. It is pretty simple to add this tag to a site with a small line of code.

The handle in the tag could also refer to any fediverse account, not just Mastodon. That means for example, it can point at accounts on Flipboard, Threads, WordPress with the ActivityPub plug-in installed, PeerTube, Pixelfed and others. Plus, it will work without the leading at symbol (@) for the handle, Mastodon says.

One caveat, though, is that it doesn't yet support multiple authors for co-byline situations; only the first author will show. But that may be addressed in a future release.

Mastodon says it will propose a specification draft for other ActivityPub platforms in the weeks ahead.

Adding the tag may nudge even more reporters to go ahead and use the federated social network more extensively since it will boost their career. Fediverse has 10+ million users, though, excluding Threads, which has 170 million monthly users but isn't entirely federated. Mastodon specifically has about 804,000 monthly actives.