As Twitter rebrands to X, is it time to seek alternatives?

With a fresh wave of users leaving a rebranded Twitter, some are seeking out smaller, kinder alternatives – like T2.

Elon Musk has had a busy few days. After announcing on the social media platform on 22 July that Twitter would be renamed X, users woke up a couple of mornings later to find the X branding being rolled out across the site. This is in conjunction with plans to turn it into a ‘super app’ much like China’s WeChat, where users can pay bills or order food.

For some, excitement, for others, this is the last straw. Following Elon’s takeover in October 2022, it has been a turbulent nine months. There have been significant layoffs, and a reportedly large drop in advertising revenue as brands got spooked by a series of changes to the product.

Meta’s Threads seemed like a viable alternative, with more than 100 million sign ups within five days. But analysis firm ARK Investment Management claims usage fell by half little more than two weeks after launch.

Perhaps, then, it’s time to look towards smaller Twitter alternatives like T2, who are in closed beta and scaling slowly in order to build a ‘kinder and safer public square’.

“I loved working on Twitter. I didn’t necessarily love working at Twitter.”

– Gabor Cselle

T2 started out as a Google Sheet shared on Twitter by Gabor Cselle, a former employee of the social media site. Gabor asked people to add their thoughts on how to make a kinder Twitter. After going viral, the former Twitter employee decided to build an alternative.

Gabor is passionate about social media: “I loved working on Twitter. I didn’t necessarily love working at Twitter”.

Alongside co-founder Sarah Oh, Gabor launched T2 just two weeks after starting to build it, following Y Combinator’s advice to launch early.

“One thing that we have also taken very seriously from Y Combinator is to talk to our users: In the early days, we asked people to get the checkmark by scheduling a 10-minute zoom call with us. This way, we would get them verified on the platform but we will also learn from our users and get their feedback.”

“The vibes check out; often people join Bluesky, join Mastodon, and then find themselves coming back to T2 because it feels like home.”

– Gabor Cselle

And, aside from community guidelines (“typically the page no-one reads,” quips Gabor) there is a feature called ‘nudges’, in the form of a pop-up, saying: “Your post contains profanity. Most people on T2 don’t post profanity. You can still post it if you must. 🙉”

“In order to build the kinder and safer public square, we have built these nudges into the compose experience [to encourage] people to be kinder and safer on on T2 … the vibes check out; often people join Bluesky, join Mastodon, and then find themselves coming back to T2 because it feels like home.”

Listen to this episode of The Next Stage podcast for the full story.

Gabor Cselle, co-founder and CEO of T2 was in conversation with Steven Levy, editor-at-large for Wired, on Centre Stage at Collision 2023.

Subscribe to 🎙️ The Next Stage 🎙️ wherever you get your podcasts, and download this episode – or listen on the embedded player above right now.

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Main image of Gabor Cselle, co-founder and CEO of T2, onstage at Collision 2023: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)