Tired of Elon Musk? Here are the Twitter alternatives you should know about

CNN

There were few viable alternatives available to frustrated Twitter users when Elon Musk took control of Twitter in October. There may now be too many.

In recent months, a growing number of services launched or gained traction by appealing to users that are unhappy with Musk's decision to cut Twitter's staff and overhaul the verification process. They also reinstated numerous incendiary account, and, most recently, imposed temporary read limits on Tweets.

Spill and, two social apps that have been competing for users in the past few months, are strikingly similar. Meta, the dominant social media company, may disrupt this increasingly crowded market.

Meta's twitter clone launched on Wednesday, and by Friday morning, had more than 70,000,000 sign-ups. This was due to the decision to link it to Instagram. It has a much larger user base than its newer competitors and is on track to catch up quickly to Twitter. Twitter had 238 millions active users in the last year, before Musk bought it.

Some Twitter competitors have taken jabs at Meta and expressed their confidence in growing and maintaining an audience. Even if the final result is much smaller than Mark Zuckerberg's firm.

Sarah Oh, former Twitter employee and founder T2 told CNN via email that the app 'leans heavily on celebrities and large Instagram followers, and risks being more a megaphone of the established than something for everyone'.

Alphonzo Terrell, co-founder of Spill and its CEO, said that the company was 'thrilled' to see the amount of innovation taking place in the social media space and is confident in their roadmap.

What you need to know about Twitter's current competitors.

Meta's answer to Twitter is the long-anticipated product that Musk purchased for $44 billion. Meta is designed to provide a place for real-time online conversations, which has been a core selling point of Twitter. It does this in part by adopting many of Twitter's most well-known features.

Musk's twitter has clearly frustrated many users who have already downloaded the app. Zuckerberg doesn't want to just catch up with Twitter, he wants to create a much larger service.

It'll take time, but I believe there should be an app for public conversations with over 1 billion people. Twitter had the chance to do this, but it hasn't done so yet' Zuckerberg wrote. 'Hopefully, we will.

Spill

Spill, a new app created by former Twitter staffers, aims to be a "visual conversation that moves at the speed and pace of culture."

It is a visual site that promotes GIFs, videos, and memes. This makes it a popular destination for creative communities. Spill is a refuge for Black Twitter users, and other marginalized groups seeking a safe online space.

Spill's recent growth is not unique. Spill has gained "hundreds and thousands" of new users last weekend amid the renewed chaos on Twitter about the read limit, according to Terrell the CEO.

T2

T2, a service also created by ex-Twitter employees, provides a social feed with posts that are limited to 280 characters. According to Oh, its founder, it's focus on security is what sets it apart.

Oh told CNN that he wanted to create a platform that would allow people to freely share their thoughts and feelings without having to worry about harassment or abuse.

In a recent statement, Oh emphasized safety as an important differentiator, and asked if Meta had learned from its past mistakes after years of criticism on its struggle to police its platforms.

The service, which is backed by Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter), looks exactly like Twitter. However, there is one major difference. The app is based on a network that is decentralized, giving users greater control over the way the service is managed, data stored and content moderated.

It was founded independently from Twitter when Dorsey served as CEO, but was funded by Twitter until February 2022, when it became an independent organisation. Dorsey announced the idea via a tweet in 2019. He said that it would also 'build a community around it', including companies and organizations, researchers, and civil society leaders', but warned that 'this won't happen overnight'

Dorsey acknowledged this week that the market has become flooded with "Twitter-clones."

Launched before Musk acquired Twitter, but grew in popularity following the acquisition.

Users can join multiple servers, run by different groups and individuals. This is much better than a central platform like Twitter or Instagram. It is also ad-free. Eugen Rochko founded a non-profit in 2016 that developed the app.

Users can choose a server after joining. They have a choice of general interest servers, such as mastodon.world, regional servers, like sfba.social (which is for people in the San Francisco Bay Area), and servers that are geared towards different interests.

Cohost

Cohost, which will be publicly launched in June 2022 and is similar to Twitter, offers a textual social media feed that includes followers, reposts likes, comments. The product, however, is based on a chronological timeline, with no advertisements, no trending topic, and no visible interactions (think hidden counts and follower list).

According to its website, Cohost's aim is to create an environment that encourages open dialogue.

People who hear "Facebook now has a replacement for Twitter!" are unlikely to be interested in anything we do. I doubt that they will do anything to appeal to our users and we won't do anything to appeal to theirs.