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Ex-Waze CEO trying to replicate early Twitter and social media vibes with ‘Post’

Mastodon has emerged as the most recognizable Twitter alternative as of late, but there’s more than enough time for others to emerge. Former Waze CEO Noam Bardin is now trying with Post to create a “civil place to debate ideas; learn from experts, journalists, individual creators, and each other; converse freely; and have some fun.”

Noam Bardin led Waze for 12 years (until 2021), and Post is “what’s next.” At a high level, it’s described as a “Social Platform for Real People, Real News, and Civil Conversations.” LinkedIn notes a May 2022 start date, with buzz around Post emerging in the past week.

The opening post makes clear allusions to the early days of social media: 

Remember when social media was fun, introduced you to big ideas and cool people, and actually made you smarter? Remember when it didn’t waste your time and make you angry or sad? When you could disagree with someone without being threatened or insulted? We want to bring that back with Post.

In terms of features, “posts of any length” will be supported with the ability to “comment, like, share, and repost content with your opinion.” Longer-form content will somewhat hamper the quick digestibility that Twitter is known for.

Top comment by RaLX

Liked by 25 people

Sadly too many people only likes free speech when that speech matches with their own ideas, if not then they go "off with the head!"... That's what's happening on Twitter and other networks, and it won't be fixed by yet another network, it will be fixed when people understand that closing the doors to dissenting voices (even if they're annoying) is not the way to free speech...

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One big differentiator, which is reflected by the post.news URL, is the following trio of capabilities, which will require buy-in from publications: 

  • Buy individual articles from different premium news providers so you can access multiple perspectives, not just the the ones you’re subscribed to
  • Read content from various sources in a clean interface without jumping to different websites
  • Tip creators of engaging content to help them create more of it, via integrated micro-payments

In terms of content moderation, there are rules in place that will be “rigorously enforce[d]” with the “help of our community” in a nod to Waze’s crowd-sourced nature. The UI, as seen above, is relatively straightforward for a social network.

There’s a long waitlist to join Post — currently [update: 125,000 sign-ups] as of Sunday evening (PT). This is in part due to many basic features still being built out, with the “first version of Search” just launching today. Meanwhile, the “Personalized Feed”/following feature has yet to be built out with all users currently seeing the same firehouse of content. As of Saturday, around 1,000 users have been let in to “help test the system.”  As of Sunday evening, there are 3,500 activated users.

You can sign-up for the waitlist here, with your place in line noted.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com