The post-Twitter era has seen the development of numerous social networks that prioritize short posts, from open source standbys like Mastodon to new decentralized concepts like Bluesky, and small startups like Post, Spill, and Spoutible. This is spurring further growth. Tech giants like Meta, who launched his Twitter-like Threads. This is good news for those looking for a new home after the demise of Twitter (the Elon Musk-led network is now called X and heading in a different direction), but also for those looking to try out new apps and services. This poses a challenge for early adopters. .
Not everyone is happy with X's current direction. Although it's now a top-ranked app, it's not the same Twitter he was a few years ago. X has a lax approach to content moderation, and advertisers and some users are asking for new options. Even its owners have dabbled in anti-Semitism and vandalism, and more and more similar behavior is coming from its user base. As top advertisers fled, X's ads became more malicious and spammy.
Changes at Company X have been rapid and troubling, with increased activity in the social realm as alternatives to Company X emerge. But there are too many good things right now.
In other words, the Twitter diaspora is hungry for a solution that saves them from having to browse through content from half a dozen apps on top of the news websites, blogs, and other information sources they already consume while online.
This issue is currently being addressed by a separate group of developers. They're not trying to recreate or improve Twitter, they're trying to solve the problem of “too many Twitters.”
Last week, we reported on Tapestry, a new project from The Iconfactory, an app development shop best known for its work on early Twitter client Twitterrific. Tapestry, which recently raised funding on Kickstarter after showing off a prototype build, aims to offer a unified app for tracking social media, news, and RSS feeds in one place. This includes other posts in the future such as X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr, and possibly Threads.
Iconfactory was just looking to raise $100,000 to start developing a new app. Fully funded as of February 5th, it has since surpassed that and is chasing a $150,000+ stretch goal that will fund additional app features such as muting, filtering, search, and bookmarking. Now you can.
Image credits: The Icon Factory
Iconfactory is not the only developer to take advantage of this moment to create new multi-service social apps.
Silvio Rizzi, the developer of the popular Mac and iOS newsreader app Reeder, is currently working on an alternative to Reeder. Rizzi says Reeder will continue to be supported, but the new project aims to offer more than just a news feed. In last week's announcement about Mastodon, the developer hinted at plans for the app to be “more than just an RSS reader,” calling it instead “a tool that lets you access content from a variety of sources, including podcasts, YouTube, and Mastodon.” . ” He said.
The app will be in public beta on Mac, iPhone, and iPad later this spring. (A screenshot of the app's concept posted by Rizzi suggests a nod to Tapestry, as both projects came out around the same time.)
Image credits: Silvio Rizzi
Meanwhile, Tapbots, the maker of the Mastodon client Ivory (and previously the Twitter app Tweetbot on which it is based), is considering how to approach the growing number of social networks available to its users. There's more than one alternative to Twitter, so it's important to decide where to focus your limited developer resources.
Tapbots co-founder Paul Haddad said the company hasn't decided whether to support Bluesky yet, but is considering it.
“We're very much booked into the next few months with Ivory/Mastodon capabilities, and of course we're committed to Fediverse long-term,” he told TechCrunch, referring to the decentralized social web powered by the ActivityPub protocol. he said. “Then we will consider Bluesky at some point.”
However, he added that if Tapbots chooses to support Bluesky, it may or may not become part of the Ivory app.
Other services focus on the needs of power users and creators who want to cross-post to multiple networks at once. This includes scheduling tools like fedica and Postpone, as well as consumer apps like Yup. The latter provides a solution for posting to X, Bluesky, Farcaster, Lens, and Threads, but it does not have access to the Threads developer API and requires the user to use Instagram's two-factor authentication (2FA) for it to work. Must be disabled. (This is not recommended.)
Image credits: Yeah
Similarly, the app from Japanese developer Sora provides access to Mastodon, Bluesky, federated networks Misskey and Firefish.
Additionally, various Web3, blockchain-based networks and protocols such as Farcaster and Lens, as well as other decentralized networks that are fostering their own networks, such as Nostr (recently favored by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey) There is also a type protocol. There is also a decentralized network Matrix that offers multiple cross-platform clients.
Even Reddit has inspired decentralized alternatives like Lemmy, /kbin, and other smaller projects.
Not all decentralized networks communicate with each other, so bridges between protocols are also built, such as connecting Matrix to Nostr or Mastodon to Bluesky.
“We need FriendFeed in the 2000s,” Matthew Ingram, a Columbia Journalism Review journalist and longtime early adopter of the technology, quipped in a thread.
He mentions that users turned to the social networking aggregator co-founded by then-former Google employee Brett Taylor (former Salesforce co-CEO), Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev, a social networking site rich in It reminds us of a bygone era, Web 2.0. Shin. FriendFeed brings together social networking websites, bookmarking sites, websites, blogs, and microblogs in one place. This is something that is in demand again today with the proliferation of Twitter alternatives and decentralized services.
Of course, Facebook eventually acquired FriendFeed and began dominating social media, crowding out even resource-rich competitors like Google+. The social networking giant, now known as Meta, remains undefeated and has around 3.2 billion users across its family of apps. However, there are some concerns about the rush to adopt the ActivityPub protocol for the new Threads app, which is also used by Mastodon. This suggests that even Meta believes the tide could turn as users embrace these alternative social platforms.
Some small apps must decide whether to compete with or join the growing number of alternatives. For example, Twitter competitor Spoutible, founded by Christopher Bouzy, who previously developed Twitter analytics services, announced in December that its network would “soon” integrate with Mastodon for cross-posting, and later with Threads. announced.
“Users' ability to post on a variety of platforms positions Spoutible not only as a social media platform, but also as a versatile tool designed to streamline digital communications,” says Spoutible, a company that has an advantage over the competition. It was clear that this was not included, he wrote. New Twitter.
Unfortunately for those hoping for a simple cross-posting solution, Spoutible faced security issues earlier this month after it was revealed that its API had a critical vulnerability that could allow hackers to take control of user accounts. I faced it. The API also returned the user's 2FA (two-factor authentication) code and a reset token to help the user change his password. As a result, Spoutible's cross-posting plans will be on the back burner for the time being, if not for the foreseeable future.
Flipboard, another Web 2.0 survivor, recently decided that integration is the best way forward. We ditched Twitter, integrated with Mastodon, and rebuilt our backend to join the fediverse (decentralized social web). The social magazine app became the first app to support Bluesky, Mastodon, and Pixelfed (a decentralized Instagram alternative) last May, allowing users to track updates from these social networks and YouTube all in one place. became.
Image credits: flip board
Another platform, micro.blog, attempts to address cross-posting needs from a different angle as a blog host. Instead of creating content directly on social platforms, users can publish to micro.blog, follow other bloggers, participate in conversations, and more on Mastodon, Medium, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, Bluesky, Nostr. You can also cross-post to more popular platforms such as. , pixel fed. (Iconfactory said its upcoming app Tapestry will also support micro.blog).
Elsewhere, publishing giant WordPress acquired the ActivityPub plugin to enable WordPress blogs to join the Fediverse. Newsletter platform Substack has created a short-form “Notes” feed similar to Twitter. Artifact, an aggregator run by the co-founders of Instagram, pivoted to cloning Twitter before ultimately shutting down.
So there's a lot going on in the social web today. And this is by no means a definitive list of companies or developers who are attacking or amplifying the problem. Of course, there are various open source projects and smaller projects underway as well, as is often the case when open APIs are available.
It remains to be seen whether this explosion of new social networks is a temporary problem or a new situation. Perhaps some of the smaller “Twitter alternatives” will fail to gain traction and eventually die out, or perhaps more broadly, as his potential Twitter rival Pebble (formerly T2) did last year. It will be incorporated into the Fediverse.
But we may also be witnessing a web restructuring in real time. There are many protocols, many platforms, and many different ways to connect not only people, but also their media and ideas, and even links to their websites, news, and blogs.
Aggregators like Tapestry may be the first step in figuring out how to navigate this new web, but we also need a way to search the web. So it's kind of a new Google that's connected to all the activity that's going on beyond your website. Information shared with new protocols through these new social networks. And who is building it?