Twitter clones, ranked: Who’s worth the commitment?

With Twitter in constant flux since Elon Musk’s acquisition, several other social media apps have sprung up competing for our attention and our precious personal data. Chief among these is Threads – which released Meta on Wednesday – and which is now the current front-runner for Twitter’s heir apparent. But it’s also far from the only “Twitter killer” to hit the scene in recent months.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but looking at Twitter’s list of competitors makes me feel like a newly bachelor getting way too many thirsty texts from numbers I don’t recognize. There are tons of options – I just want to find the one that makes me feel safe, makes me laugh, but also challenges me, like in a healthy way… all the things you’re looking for in a social media website.

In this list, I’ve omitted the video-focused apps (e.g. TikTok, YouTube) and those that are vastly different from Twitter (e.g. Pinterest, LinkedIn), focusing instead on apps that try to do what Twitter did best : a text-forward feed with the latest news and shitposts side by side.

I just don’t know if any of these are “the one”. Let’s try to figure it out, shall we?

The newcomers

Wires

If you have an Instagram account, you’re already halfway to bed Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor. However, this is a real “Hotel California” situation, because once you’ve created a profile on Threads, you can’t delete it without also deleting its associated Instagram page. The app already has it 30 million profilesbut who knows how many of those people thought they were just navigating to a new Instagram feature?

The profession: Your friends (from Instagram) are probably already here – even though it’s too early to tell if they’ll stay. (It’s literally been one day.)
Red Flags: It’s Zuckerberg, so these are red flags all the way down.

To spill

Founded by two Black ex-Twitter employees, Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and DeVaris Brown, Spill is still in the invite-only beta testing phase. In a Exclusive AfroTech, Terrell described how much of Black Twitter and social media communities are “powered by Black women,” even though those trendsetters get “much more hate than any other group.” How to solve that problem? AI technology (for moderation) and blockchain technology (to compensate users who go viral for their original content).

The profession: Keke Palmer is on it.
Red Flags — OK, Pink Flags: “AI” and “blockchain” are two keywords in the pitch. Spill could very well find non-cunning ways to implement those technologies, but they’ve been misused and misused so much by other tech companies that it’s understandable if potential users are skeptical.

Blue sky

Like Spill, Bluesky is still in beta and invite-only, though there’s also a waiting list you can join. The platform has been around for a bit longer (the iOS app came out in February 2023), and it already has quite the kicking social scene for a semi-private social network. It seems almost identical to Twitter, which is good or bad depending on how intense your Twitter addiction was (or is, bless your heart). Bluesky is decentralized, which means users must join specific servers – although at the moment everyone is only on one main server.

The profession: Drill and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are on it.
Red Flags: It is funded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame. Remember, that man was Also not good at running a social media website. The bar has only gotten lower since he left.

Post.news

You know those people who say they only read Playboy for the articles? And it’s a joke about porn, but also about how Playboy used to have some pretty good articles? Post.news is for those people, in that it’s for Twitter hiders who were really just there for the articles. I spent about five minutes on this platform and was bored all the time. They should consider adding pornography. Just a thought!

The profession: It’s genuinely unclear.
Red Flags: Hasn’t solved journalism yet. I also searched all my most online friends and none of them have an account. This is a website for smart people, that is, no one – because social media is meant to be a mindless dingus clicking a heart button to indicate “I’m alive.”

Substack notes

So it’s a newsletter platform, but what if newsletter writers could also microblogging for their followers in a feed? Substack developers must have thought this would work. I think I looked at it once and got overwhelmed, because every time I tried to “follow” someone, I was asked if I wanted to read that person’s newsletter, and that second step is just too much friction. (BTW, I’d rather just click a link to a newsletter and pretend it’s a blog post. This isn’t exactly how Substack designs its user experience, but I’ve made it work.)

The profession: I already use Substack to read blogs (again, incorrectly called “newsletters”), so at least I already “follow” cool writers.
Red Flags: I forgot it existed until I started writing this list.

co-host

I personally know one of the co-founders, so keep in mind that my article is probably biased. Cohost feels more like Tumblr than Twitter; posts can be long, and often are. There’s no algorithm or recommendation system, so you have to find your friends manually, just like the old LiveJournal days. In the case of my social circle of friends (plus enemies and rivals), Cohost has just as much interpersonal drama as my LiveJournal days, which means I don’t actually like it all that much – but that’s my problem.

The profession: There are many refugees from Games Twitter and other adjacent Cool Nerd circles.
Red Flags: Feels like an indie basement show in that it relies on everyone attending to bring in a penny for the beer. Co-founders have written a manifesto against venture capitalists as a source of funding, but it’s not entirely clear to me how else this site could make enough money to survive in the long run. Twitter (and many others on this list) were always at a loss too, but Twitter was willing to make a lot of compromises that Cohost isn’t.

Mastodon

This is the microblogging platform that forced Internet standards to use the word “federationlong before Meta’s Threads and Bluesky launched with federated feeds. Mastodon was the first to become famous for it, and I would say, did the worst. Don’t let Mastodon say you think it’s confusing, though, because it’s actually the “best iteration of federated platforms with a user interface that’s a pleasure to use,” according to the one-sentence Google search description (which is a quote by a Mastodon user who also appears on the marketing scroll on the front page of the site). In short, it is So screwed up that you created a Bluesky profile and didn’t just keep trying to get it to work with Mastodon. (How do I get Mastodon to stop drunk calling to tell me that, by the way?)

The profession: It’s a bit like Reddit in that there are a ton of different communities, each with its own social mores and cute quirks.
Red Flags: It’s a bit like Reddit in that every part of Mastodon is ruled by a mod (or several) who may or may not be a despotic bastard.

The old standbys

tumblr

I can always rely on my old fuck buddy, Tumblr. It’s not much like Twitter and it never will be, but it certainly has a feed you can scroll through, and in the dark under the covers that’s enough. At least, usually. If you’re tempted to switch from Twitter to Tumblr, I suggest you start with the Omegaverse tag and also remember that no one wants you there.

The profession: Show me a better place for unhinged fan theories and posts that leave you wondering if you’re even a furry. It is also home to the original Glup Shitto post. Tumblr has been around for a while and it has a lot going for it.
Red Flags: The quote posting system allows for endless harassment even if the original user deletes their post because reblogs ensure that posts can never really die. It’s kind of crazy that this is exactly how Tumblr works! There’s one for every Glup Shitto Your favorite is problematic.

Disagreement

Since Discord is a live chat app, it’s weird to describe it as a Twitter competitor, but for some people (myself included) it’s a social space that causes almost the same itch, especially if you’re in the right Discords. Like Mastodon, fun on Discord is all about who you know and where you end up. It takes work.

The profession: “My friends are on it” remains the single best reason to use each platform, and in my case, Discord fits the bill.
Pink Flags: Discord made a bit of a stir when it started testing some AI features, such as a chatbotbut so far everything seems fine.

Reddit

Despite its checkered past (remember r/TheDonald? or r/FatPeopleHate?), Reddit has experience — we’re talking about a way back when hookup, like junior prom date levels of memories (and baggage). You probably don’t need me to explain to you how Reddit works or even what it is.

The profession: Are the modular feed full of both niche and broad communities.
Red Flags: Remember when all those subreddits protested the API changes back in June? Do you really want to walk away from Twitter’s bad CEO into another committed relationship with a bad CEO website? It’s better to keep it casual.

The forgotten

Every few weeks I still post to BeReal, but right now my phone has become a graveyard for abandoned social media apps. Do you remember Hive? What about Clubhouse, Peach.cool, Pillowfort and Ello? At this point, I’m wondering if the entire list I just wrote will be abandoned in the same way, replaced by a future app we’ve yet to imagine. I hope she’s nice, and I wouldn’t be mad if she’s hot too.