Meet Spill, the Twitter alternative that is rising up the charts on App Store

Twitter has been suffering from a series of problems recently, with Elon Musk claiming extreme data scraping and system manipulation have been plaguing the microblogging platform. As a result, Musk imposed some draconian measures to deal with these issues and in the process angered a huge number of users who looked for alternatives. Among many controversial steps, Twitter restricted verified and unverified accounts to a limited number of readings per day, in addition to discontinuing browsing access for users without accounts. Twitter also faced a huge outage on Monday which resulted in the platform being unavailable for hours. All these issues have forced people to look for alternatives to Twitter, and with Instagram’s own Twitter rival app called Threads arriving soon, the competition for being the top Twitter alternative is heating up.

Now, there is another potential Twitter alternative that is rising up the charts on the Apple App Store - Spill.

What is Spill?

Spill is a microblogging platform like Twitter that was created by former Twitter employees Alphonzo Terrell and DeVaris Brown, as per a report by the Washington Journal. Terrel is the former global head of social and editorial content at Twitter. Spill was launched exclusively on the App Store last month and has been gaining popularity since then, while an Android version of the app is already in the works.

Notably, it has been included in the list of the top 100 most downloaded social media apps in the same month. In fact, Spill was the most downloaded social media app on Monday and the third-most downloaded app on the App Store, which coincided with a huge outage that plagued Twitter.

While Spill has a live feed for users to check all the latest activity like other social media platforms, it focuses more on visuals, making it easier for users to share photos, videos, and GIFs with text. Inspired by the phrase “spill the tea” which means ‘to share gossip’, users can “Spill” whatever they want on the platform. Terrel said that Spill is open for everyone to join however, it has been created as a safe place for diverse communities.

How to join Spill?

Like Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky Social, Spill is currently invite-only, as it is still in a testing phase. It is only available on Apple’s devices and you can join the waitlist on the website. Alternatively, if someone is already on the platform, they can send you an invite code which you can use to join the platform.

According to the company, more than 100,000 people have signed up in the past three days, including notable celebrities such as Questlove, Lizzo, Amber Riley, Sinqua Walls, and Antoinette Robertson.