More content types
On Hometown, if you subscribe to a service that sends out Article objects over ActivityPub (such as a blog on Write As), then those full articles render in your home timeline, behind a cut for length. Also, Hometown will render a variety of rich text like italic and bold.
Mastodon is microblogging software, meant for Twitter-style shortform posting.
Hometown is microblogging for writing, but its goal is to accept many content types for reading. So while I don't plan to let Hometown users publish massive blog posts, I would like your Hometown instance to be your one-stop shop for viewing all sorts of things on the Fediverse.
Reading more content types also helps make the fediverse better. ActivityPub supports all kinds of content, but most ActivityPub servers shoehorn all their content into Note because that's the type that Mastodon treats as first-class. This has important implications for the fediverse and also on your day to day user experience. If you've dreamed of a fediverse where you can send out calendar events and RSVP to things, well, this doesn't do that but it's a step in the right direction because it encourages rich content types.
Click on this GIF for a brief video demo:
This is based on rich text work by Thibaut Girka, and my own work on Article support.