For the latest zap without the crap .
Who wants to tweet when you can blurb?
Everything you wished Twitter could do, without the musky smell.
NEWS / UPDATES
If you wish, you can still sign up for our newsletter, below, to be notified of any future developments.
Don't worry about spam or even marketing noise; we will not send any emails without actual concrete news.
We postponed this project hoping a viable alternative to Twitter/X would emerge. It's been over a year and we're now ready to call it for Bluesky.
- • We did not want to fragment the marketplace unless a deserving alternative to Twitter did not emerge. Threads was not it.
- • With the 2024 US election now history, one positive thing it has accomplished is given Bluesky about a million new users per day. Many people are just plain done with Twitter (or X, or Musky Twitter) and Elon Musk and have moved to Bluesky.
- • We are now ready to recommend that as a viable alternative and strong recommendation for former Twitter users fed up with X.
- • Of course we might revisit this in the future, but see this as unlikely given current Bluesky ownership and documented policies.
"He's not dead, Jim." - Dr. Leonard McCoy
Well... there have been at least three important developments since our decision in July:
- • Elon Musk has been talking about charging all users for Twitter (and we think that's a horrible idea that will be the final nail in the coffin for his service).
- • Meta's "Threads" had lots of signups but, from reports, it seems like Threads has had few returning users. Probably just users reserving their handle, in case. So it seems to be a bit of a dud.
- • No single Twitter-like alternative has emerged to dominate its former user base, which remains fragmented. Many Twitter users remain, waiting for something else, something to change.
- • We're keeping our eyes on Bluesky though, as it has a similar philosophy that we admire!
We think that last point might be because there isn't really an obvious, solid alternative. There wasn't much wrong with Twitter before it became so Musky, just a few limitations that could be removed, if done carefully. Yet the alternatives seem to want to reinvent it, rather than just improve it. And Meta wants to fit a square Threads product into a round Facebook hole.
We are first and foremost users ourselves, who just want a good platform to exchange small messages with news, ideas and opinions. We are not happy with current alternatives. And we're getting people signing up for news, just in case.
The status quo still sucks, and Elon is about to make it even more Musky. So we're going to keep an eye on the market and consider proceeding anyway. We'll let you know here, or if you sign up for news (below).
We're sorry to announce that we have suspended this project, at least at this time.
While completing this project, which was started to fill a gap, it has become clear that other alternatives may have become popular enough that we do not wish to attempt to further fragment that market. However, since suspending this project, we have seen the rise of new alternatives that have stolen the thunder from a failing Twitter, but have not provided the level of service independence from centralization that we had hoped to see.
We are watching the market closely now and hope that one of the many alternatives currently available will meet your needs and will succeed, where Twitter (and now Threads) has failed its community. For the record, we do not consider either Twitter/X or Meta's Threads to be viable alternatives, as they are still a centralized services, and we do not consider it to be a good idea to trust X or Meta with your data, especially given their track records and history of repeated failures.
The plan for blurbsocial.com was to avoid centralized ownership of the social media, and to provide zero tracking, zero censorship of external content feeds. We had planned to provide a client that would allow you to connect to any server you wished, or even run your own server. Then also provide features for user-defined filtering on the content to focus on areas of interest and moderate your own content.
We'd provide convenient access to the content, and provide access relays that may provide the features you desire to control your own feed, but we will not own the data and you can just point the client at a different content relay unrelated to blurbsocial.com if desired.
You would retain full control. We just make it easy to get started, easy to use, and make it look good.
FEATURES
You'll love BlurbSocialâ„¢!
It has many of the features you longed for in other social media networks.
We welcome everyone, regardless of race, gender, orientation, religion or politics. Knowing that can lead to trouble, we have your back with fair moderation (see FAQ below for more).
Some social media networks have a tiny character limit. We give you more per blurb, and then use much more intuitive automatic grouping of blurbs to keep a longer statement together, and readable.
You can create groups of people to share blurbs with. You can join groups, to focus on the topic of that group, and limit access to those groups. Or share blurbs with the world.
You own your data, but you also get to choose what you see, retaining strong abilities to filter what you see. Racism, hate speech, threats, and harassment are not welcome, but will only be blocked according to law. However, our automated and transparent tagging and scoring system will also give users and groups, the power to identify and filter abusers according to YOUR preferences.
Some people find light mode websites to be too bright. Some people want to use the service later in the evening, next to someone trying to sleep. We get it. We have a dark mode for that. Your eyes have already seen enough, especially on social media! We get it, and will go easy on your eyes.
It's free! We may also offer sponsorships or a paid app later, but there will always be a completely free option, and it won't suck. We won't be poluting your feed with fake blurbs from paid sponsors. And it won't be an annoying experience. See the FAQ for more.
NEWSLETTER
Subscribe to our newsletter!
XStay informed of development progress and availability.
Subscribe(We promise, no more than one message per month, if that.)
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it different?
Well, first we're normal people. (At least as normal as software developers are.) We're not owned by some billionaire space cadet who belives in weird stuff. We're going to always try to be reasonable, and we're going always to try to be honest and transparent.
Second, we're going to try our very best to provide a feature-rich service that is actually useful and enjoyable to use.
Third, we're going to make sure that you are in control of your feed. Even from us. We're just going to give you the tools you need to focus on areas while filtering content that you choose to avoid.
And fourth, we pride ourselves on being a community. We're going to be using this platform too, maybe even more than you, so we want to make sure it's a place where we can all be comfortable and have fun.
How will my social feed be improved compared to other social media platforms?
First, we'll have our community focus groups. You can join as many groups as you want, and you can create your own groups. You can create private groups, both open and invitation-only, and moderate within.
Second, by prioritizing your groups, we can provide the updates you want to see most, and offer choices in the order you want to see them. Suggestions only when you ask for them, otherwise just your feed, newest first or based on your preferences.
Third, we won't be inserting any ads in your feeds. Hell no! Ads are annoying, and we don't want to annoy you.
Ads are not blurbs, so they don't belong in your feeds. If we do eventually add any ads at all, they will be in reasonable places (e.g. footers), rather than pushed in your face.
Will I be censored? Do you believe in free speech?
You can jump and swear and scream and even insult people, as part of a spirited discussion. However, we do not tolerate hate speech, and we will moderate any content that is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise hateful, but we'll do so without deleting your posts. We also do not tolerate spamming or harassing users, and we will take action to auto-apply tags to allow users to filter this from our content relays and to give users the ability to filter/block you if you spam them.
Our intention is to never prevent you from posting, within the limits of the law, but to engage AI and other analyses after posting to shelter our users who do not wish to see such content.
Moderation will be in the form of tagging posts (and perhaps users) that allow other users to filter content. Repeat offenders may have such tags applied to their accounts, in the form of an algorithmically-universal score (applied evenly) and thus such a score will increase with frequency and severity. This avoids the problems other services have with not applying moderation uniformly, or with actions either being too lenient or too harsh, then the scorecard resetting once action applied.
We will be making use of an automated priority-based moderation system, which will allow us to "moderate" (tag) content in a timely manner, and to ensure that the most important abuses are tagged first. We will be as balanced as possible in tagging content, and we will always be transparent about our moderation decisions. But our primary goal here is to provide a safe social experience for users of our service.
Will I be censored on the Internet? Will search engines be blocked from finding my posts?
No. No content restrictions, no censorship, no moderation of outgoing content, only incoming. You control your posts. Just be aware that everyone on the Internet can see them, if they want to. Remember: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." ;)
How can I join?
It's will easy when we enable it. Just click the "Sign Up" button on the top of the home page and fill in the form.
We don't ask for much information, we respect your privacy and your time, and you can leave if you change your mind. Try us, you'll love it!
Can I edit or delete my blurbs after posting them?
Hell yes, or at least we will not have policies to prevent this. Depending on where it has reached, there may be technical restrictions on what is possible. But you can edit or delete or add to your blurbs at any time as long as they remain on our servers. However, readers will see that an edit has been made, and will see the most recent version by default. So no rewriting of history after the fact! They can also check the history to see the previous versions.
Without ads, how will BlurbSocial make any money? Will it go under?
First, our primary goal is not to make money, but to provide a reliable ongoing service that you can count on and enjoy.
We don't want it to be annoying, so we'll keep our costs as low as possible, but one possibility is that we'll probably need sponsors or even some ads in a few less prominent places. If this happens, we promise it won't be intrusive, or appear within your social feeds!
And because ads suck, we'll also likely be offering you the ability to help us, either by donating, or paying a small fee to purchase the client application (which would also remove ads, if there are any). And when we say a small fee, we mean something like $1 a month, or $10 a year. This will always be optional. If we do, we're not going to be gouging you; we hope this is something most users will want to do, because let's face it, ads suck, and if many of us pay just a little, the service will be funded. It won't take much; just a few corporate sponsors would probably also cover it.
Can I quit at any time? What happens to my blurbs?
Yes. We don't want to hold you back. You can delete your account at any time. In addition to deleting your account, you can also export all of your account's personally identifiable information (PII), with full support for GDPR user rights applied to all nations.
When you delete your account, you'll be asked if you want your previously published public blurbs to remain, or all of them deleted from our relays. Private messages will be removed from your end of the conversations, but not others.
IMPORTANT: Note however that data that has already been relayed to other content relays is beyond the control of BlurbSocial, and we cannot guarantee that it will be removed from those relays. This is the whole point. It is your data, not ours or anyone else's. Be careful with what you post, many areas of the Internet are forever.
What underlying technologies does BlurbSocial use?
To get something out there for all to use as fast as possible, we're likely to store your data in a traditional database, however the current roadmap calls for all significant user data to eventually be stored in a distributed manner, using blockchain technology. Our content relays will use a distributed architecture, in order to ensure that you retain ownership of your content. This includes both control of the data and retention of the data if BlurbSocial was to ever come to an end.
We are currently considering use of Nostr for identity and authentication, for topic group definitions and options, and for the actual social content. But we also like the blockchain-based LENS protocol for social content and may also use that depending on your options. Technical folks and developers can get more information at https://nostr.com/ and https://www.lens.xyz/.
Join Today!
Make today the day you find your new home, surrounded by peers who share you interests, provide you with the latest news, insights and information, all broken into focus groups you can rely on.
Coming soon!