The company announced last month that it was shutting down its Twitter/X alternative citing the increasingly competitive landscape, X’s ability to retain users and its own failure to gain traction with a wider audience. But after deliberately avoiding any plans to participate in the decentralized social network Mastodon during its time as a startup, Pebble has now given itself a fresh start as a dedicated Mastodon server dubbed pebble.social.
TechCrunch has now confirmed the Pebble instance was recently established by Pebble co-founder and CEO Gabor Cselle as something of a new social experiment. However, members of the Pebble community are involved in the server’s moderation.
So, it’s quite small still at this stage, but it is great that their community could not only live on in their own space, but also integrate out more broadly into the whole Fediverse.
I think their server description is underselling itself a little now, though: It says “A tiny stone can cause ripples across a whole pond. Just like every one of you, sharing your stories and insights, can create waves in our online community”. Now, in fact, they can cause a ripple right across the entire Fediverse, and not just inside their own online community!
Interestingly, they also appear to have a news feed under their Explore options. They look like a very friendly community, so I hope they prosper well on their instance.