Pebble, the first of the would-be Twitter replacements to emerge after Elon Musk bought Twitter, is shutting down. The social media platform — previously known as T2 to indicate a desire to build a Twitter clone — was founded by former Twitter employees Sarah Oh and Gabor Cselle. Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: Pebble was an early-stage, Twitter-like social network. Its goal was to become the “place to have the authentic conversations we’ve always wanted to have.” Its founders, who were largely Twitter alumni, designed Pebble to look and feel like pre-Musk Twitter, with a 280-character limit and direct messaging. I rather liked it, but it appears I was in the minority. Pebble was always a bit rough around the edges, and it never made it past about 20,000 users.
In what was still a surprising announcement, Pebble revealed its plans to shut down operations on November 1, 2023. In