Final thoughts from one of the founders of Pebble. Pebble was full of kind people. The hobbit shire of social media. And it wasn't enough. A good read.
"Being kinder and safer is not enough of a differentiator, because kindness and safety by themselves aren’t interesting enough. There was not enough interesting content on the platform for the experience to become a daily habit."
We are down to the last ~half-hour in the life of #Pebble, née t2, which I reckon to be the kindest, gentlest and smallest of the twitter alternatives — and watching it come down while logged in over there is rather poignant. Which well befits the character of the place.
Meanwhile, the chief Pebbler, @gabor has spun up an "experimental" mastodon instance, pebble.social. I do think mastodon is a better fit for that community than, say, Bluesky. Here's wishing them well!
I could not care less whether you like Pebble or not, but brigading their instance with spam, harassment, and DDoS attacks is some reddit-tier shit. Don't be like that.
Don't like the people? Block.
Distrust the company? Defederate.
Think they're a danger? Fediblock.
But don't attack the instance, that's just shitty and accomplishes nothing positive.
Have just said farewell to #Pebble, definitely one of the friendliest of the post-Twitter platforms. I joined Mastodon a year ago, but haven’t been here much. Maybe that will change in the coming days? Might need to curate my follows a little! @t2pub
If you are new to the #Fediverse network (inaccurately called #Mastodon network) and looking for end-user apps for mobile and desktop, check this #PublicDomain list:
Thinking about the #Tumblr engineer who said they believe interoperability with the social web would just be a cost center and wouldn’t bring any profits. The point is not how interoperability affects the bottom line, the point is that it allows your platform to survive in an ever changing social media landscape and have a bottom line at all. If #Pebble was part of the social web, they would have had a network of 1.8M active users, not 1,000, and perhaps wouldn’t have had to shut down.
@Gargron I'm really sorry to see #Pebble go. They had a lot of really good ideas, and not enough people to get critical mass. They should just move the domain and user accounts to a Mastodon server and let the community figure out next steps.
Il y avait une petite commu sympathique sur #Pebble (ex-T2), un réseau social "plus gentil et plus safe" qui n'avait malheureusement pas grand-chose d'autre à proposer que de la bonne volonté : le patron a annoncé mardi que le service fermerait ses portes la semaine prochaine. En cause, la concurrence (de Bluesky ?) qu'ils n'avaient pas vu venir.
Almost a year since Elon Musk took over Twitter, a social network called Pebble, designed to feel like the original Twitter platform, will be shutting down operations November 1.
#Pebble, autrefois connu sous le nom de T2 et conçu comme une alternative à #Twitter, ferme ses portes au milieu d'une forte concurrence et de défis en matière d'engagement des utilisateurs.
Periodic platform update: #Pebble, née t2 — started up by ex-twitter folks and envisioned as a kinder, gentler alternative — is shutting down!
I feel rather sad about it, though honestly I only spent a few hours there all told. It did have an endearing sort of sweetness about it. But growth was slow and the investors pulled the plug. So it goes.
#Pebble#SocialMedia
"The company’s hypothesis was that consumers were hungry for a Twitter alternative that prioritized trust, safety, and moderation from the start. Pebble continues to believe its approach to moderation was correct ..."
Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down