Social network Pebble (originally called T2) has shut down. The network promoted itself as a direct Twitter alternative, with its standout features being a safer place, with better Trust and Safety. Pebble did not manage to grow much beyond 3k daily active users, which fell to 1k daily active users by the end. Daily user numbers in the low thousands are not a problem in itself though, as these fediverse platforms indicate: Akkoma is a successful platform with similar user numbers, and micro.blog has build a sustainable multi-person business with the same order of magnitude of (paying) users.

Pebble’s founder Gabor Cselle has written an extensive reflection on Pebble, and there are some interesting lessons in there that are of relevance for fediverse platform developers as well:

• “Being kinder and safer is not enough of a differentiator, because kindness and safety by themselves aren’t interesting enough.”
• Gabor Cselle indicates that the strategy of launching with a Minimum Viable Product and quickly reiterating is essentially the correct strategy. This raises the question why Pebble did not start off as a fork of an existing fediverse platform; these platforms are freely available so you can launch as an MVP right now.
• Gabor states that “users care a lot about having a short handle, or a handle that matches the one they have on other networks”. Both Bluesky and Nostr allow for setting your domain name as your username, while fediverse features significantly longer user names. The Mastodon server for Medium promotes their short domain name as a unique selling point. Domain names on the rest of the fediverse are notably longer, and allow for duplication across instances. How people value handles, and how that impact the design of decentralised social networks remains open.
• “Should’ve Started with a Fully Algorithmic Timeline”. Algorithmic timelines are controversial, with vocal users often having a stated preference for reverse-chronological timelines. The revealed preference from people often is more in favour of algorithmic timelines however, something that Pebble also seems to have experienced.

As a next step, Pebble has now set up a Mastodon server at pebble.social. Gabor Cselle states that the new Mastodon server is “just an experiment”. Pebble user @blobcat has even build a custom front-end design for the server, which faithfully recreates the original look of Pebble. The theme has now been installed on the server, and Mastodon-Pebble looks just like the previous iteration of Pebble.