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Twitter – Around the end of 2022, Twitter, one of the largest social media sites, started letting go of thousands of employees.
Elon Musk, the long-awaited buyer and CEO, ultimately decided whether or not to part ways after the acquisition.
Musk pushed hundreds of people out the door with the purpose to change the company.
However, the decision has backfired on him and the social media platform since a number of former workers are launching their own services to rival Twitter.
T2
Sarah Oh lost her position as a human rights advisor after the initial wave of layoffs at the social media company in 2022.
She was fired as a result of the situation, and together with former Google and Twitter employee Gabor Cselle, they founded T2.
T2 is a social networking site that closely mimics Twitter and has features that the majority of users are accustomed to employing.
It is currently under beta testing and has a character limit of 280.
Even if T2 is more concerned with security, the parallels are striking.
“We really do want to create an experience that allows people to share what they want to share without fearing risk of things like abuse and harassment,” said Oh.
“We feel like we’re really well positioned to deliver on that.”
Other rising competitors
Following the Musk takeover, the following decisions made by the new CEO weren’t well received by users:
- Slashing Twitter staff
- Rethinking content moderation policies
- Lifting bans on several suspended accounts
As a result, up-and-coming companies like T2 by Sarah Oh and Gabor Cselle and Spill have drawn a lot of consumers.
One of Twitter’s investors has backed Spill, a different company started by former employees of the social media platform.
Former CEO Jack Dorsey is planning to launch Bluesky, a completely original service.
Unique approaches
T2 is based on Twitter, but other firms take a different route.
For example, the developers of Instagram announced their return by releasing a brand-new app called Artifact.
The app presents itself as an AI-powered personalized news stream.
The description was likened to Musk’s social media enterprise.
Testing has revealed that Artifact is similar to news reader apps like Apple News.
Artifact displays popular articles from well-known media sources and smaller blogs in the main feed.
Different news is provided based on the users’ activities and selected interests.
Each business appears to be making use of the chance to address Twitter users’ grievances.
An alternative, not a replacement
Co-founder of The Anti Software Software Club Jae Kaplan launched the text-based social networking site Cohost last year.
Twitter is comparable to Cohost.
After Musk launched a bid to buy Twitter, Cohost was released to the public around June 2022.
“Something that we’ve heard a lot from people who are moving from Twitter, either partially or fully, is that it is just for them a nicer experience overall,” said Kaplan.
Cohost saw a surge in activity in November after the Musk takeover.
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Within 48 hours, 80,000 new users were registered.
“People have been referring to us when they do as a Twitter alternative,” said Kaplan.
“Which I think is an important distinction from a Twitter replacement.”
However, it is challenging to absorb their position given that Twitter has acted as the main network and home for journalists, politicians, and celebrities.
Additionally, some users have been following real-time news on the blue site for years.
User activity
Twitter still has a significantly bigger user base than other applications and services, even though some of them, like Cohost, are becoming more popular once more.
In 2022, Twitter had more than 200 million daily active users.
Cohost claims to have 130,000 users even though it only has little more than 20,000 active users.
According to Sarah, T2 now has a five-digit waitlist, and she expects that number to increase.
Mastodon, Twitter’s main rival, surpassed 2.5 million subscribers in November 2022.
However, the number has fallen to around 1.4 million, indicating that the site could share the same fate as earlier service providers.
Tom Forte, a senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson addressed the movement and said:
“The incumbent has the advantage of scale, and even in a situation where you have kind of a polarizing figure like Musk take over Twitter, people are realizing that the new platforms are not nearly as effective from a one-to-many, getting your message out there.”
“Despite the fact that there may be disgruntled consumers, they’re still tweeting.”
Twitter users
After the takeover in November, Elon Musk boasted about the social media company’s growing user base.
Many people phoned to abandon the website and voiced doubts.
Furthermore, since Musk took the company private after the acquisition to avoid having to reveal user counts in quarterly financial reports, it was difficult to confirm the claims.
“If people leave, where do they go? By all accounts, there is no platform right now that is able to take on the junction of Twitter, and nothing is really prepared for it,” said Karen North, a USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism clinical professor.
“No platform has the global user base, representing people from all walks of life the way that Twitter does.”
Withering urgency
Since Elon Musk completed the purchase, there has allegedly been less of the early commotion and media attention around the new CEO.
Even if there is undoubtedly some dissent, the bulk of people no longer feel the same urgency as they did in October.
Eugen Rochko, the man behind Mastodon, isn’t very worried, however.
“A platform cannot continue to go viral perpetually,” said Rochko.
“The cycle of media news and attention on social media just simply goes away after a while, but behind it leaves organic growth which is what we had before November, and which we still have now.”
