"Twitter alternatives" have repeatedly received financing, and the social scene is hot again

Image source: CNET

"Musk: 'The engine is on fire, the controls are out of order, and it's flying to the ground at high speed.'" ”

Author | Eric edited | Zi

Twitter under Musk's leadership is entering a period of unprecedented turmoil.

Twitter has experienced a series of negative events such as layoffs that laid off half of its employees and the company's financial austerity, and its future development is not clear. Musk warned that Twitter could go bankrupt, likening it to an airplane with "engines on fire, controls failing, flying to the ground at high speed."

On December 19, 2022, Musk launched a poll on Twitter, asking whether he should resign as the head of the company and saying that "I will abide by the results of this vote."

The results showed that about 57.5% of the more than 17.5 million participants voted in favor.

Source: Network

Musk, who was in an embarrassing moment, posted on December 21, 2022, "Once I find the person who is stupid enough to accept the job, I will resign as the (Twitter) CEO." After that, I was only responsible for managing the software and server teams."

When Twitter experienced various turmoil, a number of featured social products with "Twitter alternatives" in the social track undertook many new users who transferred from Twitter. While the number of users is rising rapidly, many platforms have received financing one after another.

For a while, there was a momentum of "the back waves of the Yangtze River pushing the front waves". But is it really that simple to make social products? Is Twitter really so easy to replace? Everything is still a question mark.

01 Mastodon shows up the "decentralized" longboard

The new platform that many Twitter users are turning to today is Mastodon.

Founded in 2014, Mastodon gained a lot of attention and gained a lot of new users after Twitter entered a period of turmoil. According to Sensor Tower, within two weeks of Musk's acquisition of Twitter, Mastodon's downloads in the United States soared more than 100 times to 320,000. Global downloads climbed to 1 million, an astonishing growth of 657%.

Source: medpagetoday.com

Instead, Twitter is losing a lot of users. According to Bot Sentinel, just days after the news of Musk's acquisition of Twitter was announced, Twitter lost about 1.4 million users.

On the surface, Mastodon isn't much different from social media platforms like Twitter. Users can post articles, add friends, and reply, iterate, like, and retweet.

However, one key difference between Mastodon and Twitter is that it is a decentralized platform.

Simply put, Mastodon consists of a series of servers, but these servers are divided into separate entities with locally enforced rules and regulations, which are essentially independent operations. This means that no one person or company is running Mastodon. Twitter is a centralized social platform, and all servers and data are managed by the Twitter company.

For many users, the biggest attraction of Mastodon's decentralized model is that there is no "dictatory" figure like Musk, privatizing Mastodon and making frequent adjustments to the entire platform, which is relatively more controllable and democratic.

"No one can control the entire network" and "Actually, it's more democratic," Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko once described his platform.

Source: Network

Although Mastodon is very attractive in its decentralized model, there are still some shortcomings in user experience and profit model.

Mastodon users are required to strictly follow the rules within their own servers, which means that content published on one server may not be allowed to be published on another server, which is less efficient. In addition, Mastodon does not offer some features familiar to Twitter users, such as quoting tweets. Although Mastodon users can report posts for illegal content and other reasons, the platform does not guarantee that all reported content on the server will be deleted, which will bring a bad content experience like Twitter.

In terms of profit model, Mastodon lost to Twitter. Currently, 90% of Twitter's revenue comes from advertisers, and despite the setback, the cash flow is relatively stable and the profit model is mature. Mastodon does not rely on any advertising, does not have a paid business, mainly relies on donations, crowdfunding, sponsorship to maintain operations, whether this fragile profit model can support Mastodon's development is still unknown.

Even Eugen Rochko himself is uncertain about Mastodon's scale. He has said Mastodon has difficulty replicating the network effects of other social media, and most of his friends are still on Facebook and Twitter.

02 Hive that attracts Gen Z

Outside of Mastodon, another popular social media platform is Hive.

Hive was founded in 2019 when its founder, Kassandra Pop, was 22 years old. According to Sensor Tower, Hive received around 144,000 new installs between November 18 and November 20, 2022. During this time, Hive also jumped from the 338th iPhone app in the US App Store to No. 17, and has even reached the top of the App Store free social networking apps list for a time.

Source: PopBuzz

Unlike Twitter, Hive is more like a collection of social platforms, seeing the shadow of several platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and even MySpace, such as retweets of photo and video posts, status updates and reposts, and even personalized music styles on profiles.

Hive specifically mentions, "Bring back your old love of social media in a new way."

Of course, Hive also has many differences from Twitter. Unlike Twitter, which uses personalization algorithms, Hive avoids personalization algorithms as much as possible. Based on the timeline, Hive users can explore their interests in a range of theme-based communities, such as science, technology, automotive, music, fashion, and more, features that appeal to a large Gen Z crowd.

Amy, a 24-year-old freelance music blogger, said Hive stands out for its easy-to-use search for new content, "I love that I'm able to find what I'm looking for." If I want fashion content, all I have to do is click on the fashion section".

In addition, Hive does not monetize advertising, but provides users with the option to pay, which in turn allows them to show more of their favorite music on their profile.

Hive's appeal is not only because it mixes the concept of social networking, but because it is unique and niche, truly bringing users back to pure social platforms. This platform allows users to be themselves without worrying about how others perceive them, which is very much in line with the tastes of the Gen Z crowd.

Moreover, Gen Z people relatively prefer Hive, a new social platform run by independent founders, rather than launched by large technology brands, because independent founders are more personalized and have an "Internet celebrity physique".

Of course, Hive has its shortcomings. Some media said that Hive's entire team has only three people and only two people are running, and some users have expressed regret about Hive's lack of desktop applications or websites, and said that they have encountered difficulties in registration. Other users raised concerns about Hive's security, noting that the platform could lead to a proliferation of fake user accounts.

03 Post News that is "post-wave" but ambitious

Unlike Mastodon and Hive, Post News appeared at the end of November 2022, which was founded late, but still gained high popularity.

It was founded by former Waze CEO Noam Bardin with the goal of bringing news and social media together in a Twitter-like manner. Noam Bardin said publicly: "I believe that the newspaper of the future is the news source, and I want it to be more user-friendly, good for publishers, better for society." ”

In terms of feature settings, Post News has some basic features similar to Twitter. For example, you can post and retweet other people's posts, or you can follow interesting accounts. In addition, Post News promises to be modest, a civilized place to discuss ideas, and a place with no subscriptions or ads and quality news content.

Source: NPR

In terms of monetization model, Post News encourages news publishers and independent writers to share their articles under a paywall, and then let users pay for those articles.

For now, Post News has received an undisclosed amount of funding from a16z and Scott Galloway, a professor and technology commentator at New York University. Interestingly, A16z contributed $400 million to Musk's acquisition of Twitter. Sriram Krishnan, a crypto investor at a16z, has also been working closely with Musk at Twitter headquarters.

An investment institution invested in two social platforms that were rivals to each other, which not only made the outside world think. However, Bardin said he chose to work with a16z only because it was the fastest investor to make decisions and pay.

Even with users and investors, Post News still lacked some basic features during the testing phase, such as the inability to search for other people and follow them, the inability to add alt text to images, and so on. Bardin also acknowledged that Post News is still "half-baked" and lacks basic features.

But even with its lack of features, Post News is ambitious in its goal of competing with established social media giants.

What is certain is that many Twitter users are already using other social media platforms. It is uncertain whether Twitter will collapse as a result and other platforms will take advantage of it.

After all, compared with Twitter, which has 250 million daily active users, Mastodon, Hive, Post News and many other emerging social platforms are mostly "small but beautiful", they do not have the head status of Twitter's "media square", nor do they bring too much freshness in function and too much quality in content.

In order to seize Twitter's position in the short term, these "small but beautiful" social platforms still face a difficult road.

Reference source:

Twitter alternative Hive hits 1 million users after surge of sign-ups（TechCrunch）

Post News, a Twitter alternative, gets funding from a16z（TechCrunch）