Why do I need a Mastodon application?

All third-party integration with Mastodon occurs via a Mastodon application (an application defined at your Mastodon instance), and every application is owned by one and only one Mastodon profile. You could either develop and code your own service to operate your application, or you could use an existing service to act as your agent.

The SocialOomph service is the agent that acts as the operator of your Mastodon application.

This arrangement means you own the Mastodon application that posts to your Mastodon properties, and you use SocialOomph as the software engine to do that posting for you.

It holds the following benefits:

• The Mastodon application belongs to you and only you can use it to publish posts to Mastodon.
• If any Mastodon application (other than your own) that also uses SocialOomph as an agent is restricted, deactivated, or deleted, your Mastodon application and your past Mastodon posts are not affected. In other words, you are insulated from undesireable posting behavior by other users and from erroneous account deactivations by Mastodon.
• Your Mastodon application's reputation (that the Mastodon instance administrator uses to impose restrictions and deactivations) relies solely on your posting behavior and is not affected by any undesirable posting behavior of anyone else.
• For the Mastodon instance administrator the benefit is that your Mastodon application operates within their rules and application management environment. In other words, they can enforce their policies and rules on your application with no impediment. Undesireable posting behavior can be identified and shut down much faster because it's not cloaked by the posting behavior of thousands of other users.
• For SocialOomph the benefit is that erroneous deactivation of personal profiles, deactivation of or restrictions imposed on a Mastodon application, and undesireable posting behavior by one user does not affect our entire user base.