Spill founders Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell (L) and DeVaris Brown (R) (Photo: Spill website, https://www.spill-app.com/team)
Black Twitter has a new place to go. The new Black-owned social media platform Spill is getting such a migration of people from Twitter that its server crashed. Spill had to send out a tweet on July 2 saying, “Hey #SPill fam – for folks signing up and getting an “SWS” error, y’all maxed out our daily transactions on our servers – we’re increasing so just give us a beat, will communicate once we’re back up.”
It’s no wonder the server crashed; even before the platform launched in January, they had a waiting list for signups of more than 20,000, Business Insider reported.
Twitter users have been looking for an alternative since the takeover of Twitter by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in October 2022. The new regime caused an exodus of many notables on Black Twitter. Many of whom, such as filmmaker Ava DuVernay, have landed on Spill. The NBA has also apparently launched its own Spill account.
Two former Twitter employees launched the new app in hopes of luring in Black Twitter. Twitter’s former global head of social and editorial, Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell, and DeVaris Brown, a former product manager lead at Twitter, decided to create Spill, a social media app that understands Black culture.
Terrell had been Twitter’s global head of Social & Editorial until November 2022 when he became one of the thousands of employees laid off after Musk’s takeover. Brown had been a product manager lead at Twitter and exited Twitter in 2020 to found Meroxa, a Series A startup that is a data streaming platform designed to create a real-time data infrastructure.
“We were the only two Black guys in there, and we were like, ‘Hey, we’ll be friends!’” Terrell told TechCrunch.
Spill uses blockchain technology to chart how posts go viral and compensate the creators behind them, TechCrunch reported.
“It’s not a web3 thing,” Terrell told TechCrunch. “But the use of blockchain is for both crediting creators and setting up a model for us to compensate them automatically. If they have a spill that goes viral and we monetize it, it’s really effective.”
Meanwhile, over at Twitter, Musk recently announced new restrictions on Twitter that seemed designed to force people off the platform.
Unverified Twitter users, for example, can now read no more than 600 posts daily, while new accounts can read no more than 300. Verified accounts can view no more than 6000 posts per day, Yahoo reported.
On Spill users post spills and it is positioning it itself as a safe space for Black users by filtering out hate speech and recognizing the contributions of the Black community in driving social media trends.
Spill opened its waitlist in December 2022, and since then, it has generated 60,000 registrations, according to TechCrunch.
The platform promises a feed where users can “create, comment, amplify or share a random thought, called a ‘Spill,’” per the company’s website.
Users can also join in-app chat events with friends virtually or in person through a feature called “tea parties.”
One of the main draws for Spill is that content creators will be compensated. When posts go viral, users will automatically receive financial compensation. Payment will be in the form of U.S. dollars since the company is not a web3 company.
Spill founders Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell (L) and DeVaris Brown (R) (Photo: Spill website, https://www.spill-app.com/team)
