Twitter alternative Pebble shuts down amid tough competition

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter (now called X) alternative Pebble has become the first casualty among X rivals who are trying hard to beat Elon Musk-run platform.

The micro-blogging startup Pebble (formerly T2), is shutting down and the company said they have run out of time to make Pebble happen, reports TechCrunch.

The app reached 3,000 daily active users, out of 20,000 registered users.

The daily user figure dropped to 1,000 following its rebranding from T2.

“I think the competitive landscape evolved faster than we had thought. I didn’t think that quite as many people -- established organisations and newcomers -- would try to do the same thing that we were doing and in very similar ways,” said Pebble Co-founder and CEO, Gabor Cselle.

Today, the market for X alternatives is crowded with platforms like Instagram’s Threads, open source-based platform Mastodon, Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky and more.

“We weren’t growing fast enough to convince investors of a breakout,” Cselle wrote in a Pebble post.

“With many alternatives in space, the challenge was even greater. We needed more investment and time to fully realize Pebble,” he added.

As Pebble shuts down, early adopters will have the option of exporting their Pebble posts as a zip file.

Pebble won’t direct users back to X or any other social network.

Pebble is also returning a small amount of the funds left over to its investors, the report mentioned.

Meanwhile, X under Musk is witnessing around 500 million posts per day.

In a bid to retain users on its platform, X has paid nearly $20 million (more than Rs 166 crore) to creators so far, according to its CEO Linda Yaccarino.

According to her, the company will be profitable by early 2024, adding that the platform may now have 200-250 million daily active users.