T2

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T2 was a social media silo that was an attempt to “build another Twitter” that was announced, launched, raised 1.1m from angels, then partially rebranded as “Pebble” at https://pebble.is (no relation to the watch) a month before it shut down, all in less than a year.

Features

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Somewhat Twitter-like.

(needs screenshots before it dies 2023-11-01!)

History

2022

• 2022-11-08 announced on Twitter: https://web.archive.org/web/20221226154310/https://twitter.com/gabor/status/1589837734927290369

  I'm building a Twitter alternative.

  Secured first $ commitments today.
  Waitlist will be up in the next 36 hours.
  Pre-reserve your handle in 1 week.

  Hoping I don't get thrown off Twitter before then

• 2022-11-09 TechCrunch: Google and Twitter veteran maps out a Twitter alternative

  "… in real time, with a multi-tabbed Google Doc …"

  and said Google Doc:
  • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WBTi5lblKcd0XGGisiwK5AxpX4OhWYxEDaKAfXMdkyc/)

2023

• January raised 1.1m from angel investors: https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/12/twitter-rival-t2-raises-its-first-outside-funding-1-1m-from-a-group-of-high-profile-angels/

• September partial rebranding: despite a header image with "Pebble" branding, founder bio says: https://twitter.com/gabor

  Working on T2 - a safer, more authentic, and more fun public square.

  and still links to "t2.social".

• October shutdown: https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/24/pebble-the-twitter-alternative-previously-known-as-t2-is-closing-down

Shutdown

Official shutdown notice:

• https://pebble.is/gabor/status/340649 by founder Gabor Cselle:

  1/ 📢 Announcement from the Pebble Team: We have some sad news to share today. As of November 1, 2023, Pebble will be shutting down.

Articles / blog posts about the shutdown:

• 2023-10-24 Manton Reece: Pebble is shutting down

See Also

• site-deaths
• social media
• silo
• shutdown notice on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@gaborcselle/post/CzEix3nJFQ_/
• ^

  Hi folks, a year ago I started a Twitter alternative (initially called T2, later called Pebble). Tomorrow we will be shutting it down. We just weren't growing quickly enough to be able to raise money to build it out. It was also a super competitive space as evidenced by my posting this on Threads by Meta.

  Lots of lessons learned. Will share some of them here in a bit.

• postmortem https://medium.com/gabor/from-t2-to-pebble-the-rise-challenges-and-lessons-of-building-a-twitter-alternative-553652f1d1e7
• They launched a Mastodon instance for their users to migrate to (unknown if identities or content are migrated) https://pebble.social/@gabor