Copy and Kill: The Ex-Tweeps Hatching a Plan to Knock Off TwitterCopy and Kill: The Ex-Tweeps Hatching a Plan to Knock Off TwitterArt by Clark Miller
The Big Read

Copy and Kill: The Ex-Tweeps Hatching a Plan to Knock Off Twitter

A Twitter look-alike called T2 joins the flock of services offering an alternative to the original.

By
Arielle Pardes

On the day Sarah Oh got laid off from Twitter last November, her friend Gabor Cselle called with his condolences. Then he made her an offer: Would she help him build a better Twitter?

Cselle wasn’t trying to reinvent the social media wheel. He just wanted to return to a simpler time on the platform—before 4,000-character tweets or the bloodbath of blue check marks. Before Donald Trump or Alex Jones or Ye could spread vitriol like a virus. Before Elon Musk or even Jack Dorsey ran the company. (Cselle blames Dorsey, not Musk, for greenlighting “one crappy growth hack after another” in pursuit of more monthly active users.)