In the midst of various problems faced by Twitter, an alternative application for Twitter has a great opportunity. As has happened during the migration of users from Digg to Reddit or from Yahoo to Google. But I don't see any Twitter alternatives popping up.
I wonder how much people are secretly just hoping Twitter dies with no replacement. Skepticism about social media is basically the default position for educated professionals now, who are likely to already have distanced themselves from Facebook. The Twitter users I know would be happy to get rid of it, if not for the perceived career benefits (likewise with LinkedIn). When Twitter no longer offers any ladder-climbing benefits for technocrats, it will degenerate to be a shittier cousin of Instagram.
Honestly, because I don't see what problem Twitter is solving in the first place. Twitter popped into our reality as the winner in a time when social media was launching and everyone wanted to be a voice on the internet. And for that it works and thrives on its own momentum. But I'm not sure being a voice on the internet is actually a problem the needs a solution now that social media has matured and many people are backing away from it.
It's interesting because I don't know if it's possible for anything to truly replace Twitter. I think what will happen is people will splinter off into online forums where they feel most comfortable based on the level of moderation on each site and who is there. Twitter was unique in that everyone was on it, sadly I don't think we'll ever have that again.
Because Twitter is fine. If you ignore the fud, the experience on Twitter hasn't changed at all.
Well, there's Mastodon, of course.
I'm kind of surprised that whoever owns Tumblr this week isn't pushing it harder; Tumblr is, when it comes to it, more or less twitter without the character limit and with a much worse mobile app (most Twitter features were effectively copied from Tumblr).
That said, I'm not sure that there needs to be a single direct replacement for Twitter; historically, when a social network dies, generally it isn't replaced by a direct clone but by different things.
Everyones too busy building a note taking app.
Google returned better search results than Yahoo, and Reddit was objectively a better experience than Digg 2.0. The move was a positive experience for the entire userbase and that isn't true for any of the current crop of Twitter alternatives.
Well app.net[0] had great potential and got shutdown. From Wikipedia:
> On May 6, 2014, the founders announced that subscription renewals had been so poor that there were no longer funds to retain development staff for App.net and future operations would be on a maintenance-only basis using contractors
I used to love that platform in its heyday. You didn't have to pay with your data, you paid with a thing called, you know, money (an esoteric term in social media circles).
Zuckerberg should be the obvious canidate for building a alternative. You could probably just use facebooks timeline logic. But he is too busy building the metaverse
Reddit is a good example why;
The technology isn't impossible, but it needs a business plan that's not traditional advertising to have an decent be exit.
Who says they aren’t? I’ve been reached out to to help create one recently. I imagine there are several in the works.
With what money? VC money? Which VC? What would the business model be exactly?
Ad money is drying up as companies are slashing online ad budgets. Now I'm sure eventually if Twitter goes down, traditional media will settle on a specific app to promote heavily, but this time, it will be on their terms.
I created one over the weekend :) https://github.com/mag-/folx
Stay tuned for launch next week! :)
I actually had a really good idea for a social media site this month, just before Elon bought twitter. I've been working on the idea a bit, but without a strong network effect it might not go anywhere. People flocked to Twitter because of who was there.
Because it is not useful or cool at all? If some politician, VIP, or other billionaire want to declare a war or inform about their career change and hit the reader with a sign in wall, they can get a blog. 1/6
Kara Swisher recently interviewed Noam Bardin, the creator of:
This seems like a public square with the exact opposite goals of Elon (heavy moderation)
Because it's already been here since 2016: Mastodon.
I keep using Twitter and not much has changed for me in the last couple of weeks. Honestly I think most of it is FUD at this point.
I guess because we are not in the 2010s anymore. Something new will probably emerge, but it won't be like Twitter.
what about tumblr? that's where seemingly a lot of former twitter users are moving to
Please no. Kill Twitter. Kill Facebook as well while we are at it.
Mastodon
Truth social ?
There are a lot of alternatives popping up: BlueSky, Mastodon, Farcaster, nostr. There are also some older protocols that people are still building on like secure scuttlebutt.
I've written about some of the differences of these protocols here:
https://mirror.xyz/mattdesl.eth/_F9vQAUeeBB9AJNwMNaE_G5kTcl1...