Co-hosta potential X competitor that was set to launch publicly in June 2022, is closing its doors, the company said. It was announced via the social network’s staff account earlier this week. The service operated very similarly to Twitter, offering users the ability to follow others, view posts in a feed, and like and repost content shared by others. However, Cohost stood out by focusing on a chronological feed without trending topics, supporting long-form posts, and pursuing a business model that didn’t rely on advertising.
The startup’s premium subscription service, Cohost Plus, offered advanced features like increased file size limits on uploads, with plans to add support for creator tools like tips and the ability to sell subscriptions, among other things.
Founded by a non-profit software company, Anti-Software Club, With a small number of developers, Cohost’s statement He had anti-capitalist and anti-big tech leanings.
“[We] “We have watched the world believe the lies of people who believe in the vast potential of technology, and who believe that the best way to realize that potential is to build for-profit companies that enable the petty bourgeoisie of the creative class to go about their day without acknowledging the existence of another human being,” founders Colin Baer and Jay Kaplan. Stated In 2020, they announced the creation of a joint working group. “We believe we can do better by building tools that focus on fair dealing and sustainable growth rather than market dominance,” their statement read.
Despite Cohost’s ambitions to disrupt the tech giants, it faced increasing competition not only from X (formerly Twitter) but also from Meta, which launched its Twitter-like Threads service. Users who preferred decentralized social networks over an open social network also had other options, including Mastodon, Blue Sky, and others.
As a result, Cohost will no longer be able to continue.
The company cited “lack of funding and exhaustion” as reasons for the closure, currently planned for the end of 2024.
“As of today, none of us have been paid for our work,” the company shared in a post on its employee account, perhaps in an attempt to dispel Rumors “Staff salaries have eaten up the money. “All of our money in the bank, and any money that comes in from people buying our stuff or not canceling their Cohost Plus subscription, goes into servers and operations — paying the bills so we can keep the lights on with as little disruption as possible.”
The site will be read-only as of October 2, 2024, and the team will work to keep the servers online until the end of the year. Engineers will focus on improving the data export system in the coming weeks, so that users can save their posts. The founders also said that control of the Cohost source code will be transferred to the unnamed person “who funded the majority of our operations.”
The company had been experiencing financial difficulties in a series of Updates The crisis began in March, with the site’s main funder, who preferred to remain anonymous, being completely cut off from contact as money ran out. However, Cohost was unable to sustain itself, with just 30,000 monthly active users and 2,630 subscribers as of March 11, 2024. The company noted that with its current deficit of $17,000 at the time, it would need to sell an additional 3,400 subscriptions to cover its expenses. Realizing that this was an impossible goal, the team began looking for other means of supporting itself, including advertising.
Already, many Cohost users and former engineers have started finding their way to Mastodon and Bluesky, some posting with the hashtag #cohost, to find each other as they mourn their loss.
Cohost isn’t the first potential competitor to X to shut down due to lack of traction after Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, which sparked a wave of development. Other efforts, including T2 (formerly Pebble) and micropayments-focused Post, have also shut down after short periods of operation.
Correction 9/12/24, 9:30 p.m. ET: Due to a typo, the shutdown was listed as occurring in 2021 instead of 2024. This has been updated.