Twitter alternative Post News is shutting down

Post News, a Twitter replacement that emerged successful nan aftermath of Elon Musk’s takeover, is shutting down. Noam Bardin, nan platform’s laminitis and erstwhile CEO of Waze, writes that Post News “is not increasing accelerated capable to go a existent business aliases a important platform.”

The Andreessen Horowitz-backed level launched successful a closed beta successful November 2022, but now it’s group to shutter “within nan adjacent fewer weeks.” It serves arsenic a societal level that besides offers users ad-free entree to paywalled contented from publishers specified arsenic Fortune, Business Insider, Wired, The Boston Globe, and others. All users person to do is salary a “few cents” per article alternatively of signing up for a subscription to each publication.

After lifting its waitlist successful early 2023, Bardin told TechCrunch that astir 430,000 group signed up. The level yet rolled retired a mobile app and later launched a real-time notification system, pinch plans for much features successful nan future. However, nan costs of keeping nan level moving seems to person outweighed personification activity.

“We built a toxicity-free community, a level wherever Publishers engage, and an app that validated galore theories astir Micropayments and consumers’ willingness to acquisition individual articles,” Bardin writes. “A user business, astatine its core, needs to show accelerated user take and we person not managed to find nan correct merchandise operation to make it happen.”

Post News will fto users download their posts connected nan level starting adjacent week. Users tin besides retreat nan rate equilibrium utilized for article payments and creator tips until May 31st. Post News isn’t nan only Twitter replacement that struggled to find an audience, arsenic different imaginable rival, Pebble, unopen down successful November 2023.

But respective Twitter alternatives are still opinionated — and each of them are part of nan fediverse, which intends they’re unfastened to sharing their contented pinch different societal platforms. The decentralized platforms Mastodon and Bluesky are still going strong, while Meta’s Threads launched its fediverse beta successful March and added Taylor Swift to its personification base.