Where do we go from Twitter?
It’s time to talk about the woolly mammoth in the room. People are looking for alternatives to Twitter. Let’s discuss your options.
“Wasn’t Twitter supposed to die now by now or something…” quipped Elon Musk.
He was responding to conjecture from critics that the site would soon begin breaking down after laying off roughly half of the company (and counting). And also to the celebrities and regular folk who have threatened to leave the platform.
But according to Elon, everything is going great, with Twitter usage at an all-time high. Whether Twitter’s surge will survive when the World Cup is over remains to be seen. Some of us will stick around because we just love the platform. Others will too, just to see what happens next.
The buzziest competitor: There’s no doubt that people are looking around for a Twitter alternative. Mastodon has been one of the headlining alternatives (yes, I know mastodons actually pre-date the woolly mammoth, don’t @ me). Nearly 180,000 people joined Mastodon in a single day last week. People like it because it's decentralized and open-source, but plenty of new adopters have said online that the learning curve was large.
The old guy: Legacy social platforms want in on the traffic too. Tumblr’s worldwide downloads have surged 77% since Twitter’s acquisition. Matt Mullenweg has been positioning Tumblr to "be a better Twitter than Twitter ever was.” This week he revealed via Twitter that Tumblr is adding support for the ActivityPub protocol that powers Mastodon.
The newcomers: Right now, it feels like social media has become more chaotic than anyone could have predicted. If that continues, perhaps it’s anyone’s game, so let’s recap new players.
- On Mastodon you can post, create or join servers/Instances (e.g. like ones for foodies), and do it all ad-free.
- Hive Social offers a chronological feed and other features you liked from the good ol’ days.
- Truth Social is, yep, Trump’s social app. And apparently, he’s in no rush to return to Twitter.
- Herd Social matches you with members with like interests.
- HeyCafe is built to be “a safe place for people to hang out.” It has no ads, no promoted content, and just launched its latest update.
Btw, Elon might not actually care what you do anyway.
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Comments (56)
Zlatko Najdenovski@zlat
Wherever we might go, I‘d like to see the next social media being subscription-based.
I‘ve been thinking a lot about this—even written about it—and I realized that the only revolution in social media towards a more ethical pathway is if the business model considers us as customers, not a product sold to advertisers.
tribevibe.earth/blog/redefining-social-media.html
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Absolutely not.
@cem_koker absolutely agree - Twitter become better and better after Elon. To say truth - we even don't know how bad Twitter was before. For now Elon remove all shadow bans, view filters, make all rules transparent...
So - there is no reason to migrate. Much more - there is many reason to migrate back ))
I am enjoying Mastodon, but trying other sites too..
@bangu55 you can try Buzz Chat also https://www.producthunt.com/prod...
First time checking Tumblr in a decade. Created a new account and the onboarding there was the best out of all the mentioned. If there is one person I would trust in these times it probably is @photomatt and the team there at Automattic... Just need to be able to import follow lists.
And now, he is about to compete with Apple: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/2... I think that he puts too much energy into the project and his primary business – Tesla can be affected. Possibly, it can be a threat to shareholders. 🙈
@busmark_w_nika I think I recall seeing he’s being sued by shareholders of his other companies because of his dedication—fabricated or not; who knows—to Twitter.
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