Who is interested in building a Twitter alternative?
braxton
10 replies
Twitter is struggling and users are concerned that Twitter may not last. I see this as a perfect time to create something that users can migrate to. Yes, Mastodon exists already, but I feel that this could be a different experience than Mastodon and other alternatives.
Is anyone interested in building a tentative Twitter alternative?
Replies
Henrique@boregio
Assuming you could push a button and have this Twitter alternative built already, how would you get users to switch?
Share
What is the evidence that twitter is struggling? I rather think that all the scandals and bad news ultimately brings people TO the platform now away from it.
But I’d like to hear what others think about it
Notaku
You could follow the Musk vision (adding payments and other WeChat things) and try to get acquired for some millions by Twitter itself
You would also need a way to import your existing Twitter data
To me Mastodon doesn't really make sense, it's fragmented between servers, it's more like Discord than Twitter
@xmorse I wrote a short introduction to Mastodon, in case you find it useful.
https://diaspora.psyco.fr/posts/...
Serand
Twitter is not going anywhere..
Waverly
Not sure about building a Twitter alternative... there is so much noise and misinformation going on. What is needed is a healthier social platform for people to learn and discover content that matters.
At Waverly, we are not replacing what Twitter is doing, but rather we use prompt engineering to generate your personalized content feed without noise and distraction.
Waverly helps you to focus on content that matters.
Check us out on Product Hunt and let us know what you think.
Jeeves
what would this alternative look like?
So while I typically don't discourage any alternatives, and I'm not doing it now, you have to be honest with yourself in recognising where this 'twitter is failing' narrative is coming from.
It's not coming from the 90% of the users. It's coming from the <2% of hyper partisans and their affiliated media. It's coming from companies which are being held hostage by activists (pull your support from x or you'll be attacked next).
So the question you have to ask yourself as a prerequisite to building an alternative is this;
"In order to attract the people who are complaining about twitter, to my platform, what concessions/decisions will I have to make"
Immediately followed by another question;
"do I actually want to build a platform where it's entire growth strategy is trying to attract the most extreme elements of twitter which are unhappy with where it's going. Do I want to put crosshairs on my own back since this demographic of people will never be satisfied, and they will always be digging for the next thing to cancel each other over"
Speaking purely for myself, I'd do everything within my power to avoid trying to cater to extremists - be it those on the far right or far left. There is no winning with either group, you just create echo chambers and cesspools.
I feel like this is the beginning of twitter.
FOOOOOD
Sure! I'm interested!