Spill New Twitter Alternative

Spill is a new and upcoming social media platform that two ex-Twitter employees are building. DeVaris Brown and Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell met on their first day at Twitter during an orientation day.

Terrell commented on their friendship,

We were the only two Black guys in there, and we were like, ‘Hey, we’ll be friends!’

He was the company’s global head of Social and Editorial until last month when Musk’s Twitter terminated up to 5,500 contractors.

Brown worked on machine learning as a product manager lead at Twitter. In 2020, Brown left the company to found Meroxa, a Series A startup that helps companies to build their data pipeline.

Terrell and Brown are working together again, and they’ve just announced waitlist signups for Spill, a platform they describe as:

A real-time conversational platform that puts culture first.

They estimate that the platform will launch in 6-8 weeks.

What We Know So Far

Popular at the moment, blockchain technology has been helping businesses grow.

While Terrell refuses to call Spill a web3 company, he said it was important to them to have built-in content monetization features from the get-go. To chart how posts go viral and to compensate the creators, Spill will use blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology will allow instant compensation for content creators

Terrell noted the creators would get their money in U.S. dollars, not cryptocurrency, because blockchain technology lives under the hood in the tech stack.

While Terrell says they haven’t yet decided what the revenue will look like, blockchain technology will allow instant compensation for content creators as they publish viral content.

Spill will have a news page where users can post “spills,” similar to Twitter. Terrell says they’re going after the teacup motif, saying that “spill” comes from “spill the tea.”

Popular content creators can host free live events for bonuses

Users can host online and real-life events using a feature called “tea parties.” Participating and hosting these events will give in-app bonuses such as post boosting; users will also be able to buy boosts, but popular content creators will get these things for free.

Terrell said he spoke to the black community, asking them questions such as:

  1. How they make their money as content creators
  2. Are the platforms supporting them and,
  3. If they’re interested in the idea of Spill
The team behind Spill includes ex-Twitter design chief Dantley Davis

Spill’s CTO, DeVaris Brown, says the AI used for large language content moderation is made by people from the culture and that the company will honor cultural content.

A study showed that tweets written by African Americans were 1.5 times more likely to be flagged as hateful or offensive, while tweets using AAVE (African American vernacular English) are 2.2 times as likely.

The linguistic nuances of different cultured can’t be understood by AI, especially if its developers don’t understand cultures beyond their own. Brown could finally change that. He said,

We’re going to be more intentional and be more accurate around things that will be deemed offensive because, again, this is our lived experience or learned experience

He further went on to say,

It’ll be much more accurate to catch those kinds of things that will detract from the platform that would not lend to creating a safe space for our users and our creators.

The team behind Spill includes ten people and three advisors, including Dantley Davis, Twitter’s former design chief.

“You’ve got John McClane and MacGyver here!” said Brown. To expand on this, he further went on to say,

Phonz, on the content and social side, has run some of the largest and most successful campaigns in the world.

At Twitter, Terrell’s team won a Webby Award for Best Overall Social Presence, and before that, he led social media marketing at HBO. To this, Brown added,

And then you have me, who literally has run some of the largest web-scale services, probably since the advent and popularization of cloud computing. This isn’t our first rodeo.

Users can already reserve their handles and receive updates on Spill’s waitlist.

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