Peach Pals: The Last Holdouts On a Once-Celebrated, Now Dying, Twitter Replacement
Despite the app’s failure to serve as a viable Twitter alternative, it still has dedicated users, six years on
In 2016, one of the co-founders of Vine, the now-defunct but much-beloved short-form video platform, unveiled Peach, a new social media app. Thousands of users signed up following articles published by Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and The Guardian, comparing Peach to Tumblr and Twitter. Today, just over six years later, Peach is well and truly abandoned. Its last update was in October 2017, the app’s website is dead, and the company Twitter account hasn’t been used since 2019.
Despite all this however, there are users who still use the app, persistent bugs and all—myself included. In a 2019 article about Peach and how its remaining users navigate its imperfections, Bijan Stephen described the app as “a special place: Warm, inviting, and private, a port hidden from the chaotic storm of posts that make up the contemporary internet.” This description is incredibly apt. Even now, six years later, logging into Peach feels like stepping into a slumber party with your friends, instead of opening Pandora’s box and bracing yourself for the horrors that lie within most social media platforms today.
While articles at the time of its launch described Peach as a platform “seeking to slide into the space in our digital lives somewhere between Twitter and Facebook”, I think Peach occupies the same space that LiveJournal or Tumblr did, with a few key differences. There is no centralized feed where you can see all of the content posted by people you follow. To see your friends’ posts, you have to go to their profiles. There’s also no ability to repost their content to your own feed like on Tumblr or Twitter, making likes and comments the only way to engage.
However, describing Peach by what it doesn’t have does it a disservice. It has a lot going for it, evidenced by the fact that some of us still continue using it even after its own founders have given up. I asked my friend Priya why she continues using the app and she said, “Tbh, it is kinda refreshing that nobody is trying to monetize it and that there aren't new updates being churned out every 2 minutes…. It feels pure. It’s a place to express yourself without being made crazy by ads and such.”
I agree with her. I also suspect that the things that make Peach “pure” led to its eventual demise—difficulties getting brands on Peach/monetizing the platform contributed to its abandonment. There’s no place to stick ads since there’s no centralized feed, and brands would have had to accrue an incredible amount of loyalty to get potential customers to 1. Follow them and 2. Make the effort to visit their profile. I suspect that the lack of advertising, combined with the intimate nature of the communities on the app, are what keeps its few remaining users returning to it.
To a certain subgroup of millennials who grew up online, Peach is an excellent, low-stakes way to share life updates and thoughts that are too intimate or personal for more public-facing sites like Facebook, Twitter, or even Tumblr. Like my friend and fellow Peach holdout Louie says, “It’s my way to keep in touch with a lot of people who I’ve known on the internet forever, and I love being able to keep in touch with each other’s lives through little cute personal titbits.” (Peach accounts replaced alt Twitter accounts: private Twitter accounts with much smaller followings where people can share more personal thoughts.)
Other features on Peach are more of a novelty, but still appreciated. The app lets you enter "magic words" that make it easy to do things like share what you’re currently listening to or watching, your location, or a randomized throwback photo from your phone’s photo library. One long-time favorite was the built-in game Peachball where users have to try and shoot a basketball into a hoop.
As for its developers, they’re nowhere to be seen. The app’s minimalist website, peach.cool, no longer exists, although according to Wayback Machine, it was still live as recently as September 2022. The last update, boasting “Bug fixes for iOS 11!”, was released in October 2017. The app’s Twitter account last tweeted in February 2019 soliciting feedback from users, which they continue to share in the replies, including one plea to, “Please, get your stuff together. You are my only outlet” and a eulogy: “Long live peach and it's short but feisty reign.”
Bugs run rampant on the app. For example, I haven’t received a notification from Peach for years, and every time I try to find contacts of mine on Peach, the app crashes. My friend Lily said, “I have to quit the app a lot and [the bugs] seem to get worse with every iOS update.” Priya pointed out, however, that “considering [developers have abandoned it], I feel like it could be a lot worse!”
Peach’s founder Dom Hofmann has moved onto web3, focusing on NFTs. It’s not clear if he knows that an app he’s moved on from continues to be valued by a small group of people. Based on the number of individuals who continue to tweet him whenever the app goes down, it's clear that Peach’s small but vocal user base try not to let him forget. It's hard to know just how many people are still using the app, but 23 people liked a November 27 tweet from Hofmann, responding to someone asking him to fix Peach. Nine additional people thanked him once he brought the app back online.
Internet culture writers have been eulogizing Peach since late 2016. While people have been scrambling to find a replacement for Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition, I’m left wondering if there are any social media platforms that have the same energy and fulfill the same purpose as Peach. Much like Vine before it, Peach is a rare app where you as the user don’t feel like the product, and much like Vine before it, this has been a major contributor to Peach’s demise. In an ideal world, tech founders would look at the cult popularity of platforms like Vine, Peach, and Tumblr, where many users have stubbornly remained despite many pitfalls, and realize the strong demand for a well-made social platform—one that prioritizes users. Peach’s hopeful holdouts are a clear example—hanging on even after the platform’s own creators have left the building with the lights still on.
Dec 4, 2022
·
5 min read
Peach Pals: The Last Holdouts On a Once-Celebrated, Now Dying, Twitter Replacement
Despite the app’s failure to serve as a viable Twitter alternative, it still has dedicated users, six years on
In 2016, one of the co-founders of Vine, the now-defunct but much-beloved short-form video platform, unveiled Peach, a new social media app. Thousands of users signed up following articles published by Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and The Guardian, comparing Peach to Tumblr and Twitter. Today, just over six years later, Peach is well and truly abandoned. Its last update was in October 2017, the app’s website is dead, and the company Twitter account hasn’t been used since 2019.
Despite all this however, there are users who still use the app, persistent bugs and all—myself included. In a 2019 article about Peach and how its remaining users navigate its imperfections, Bijan Stephen described the app as “a special place: Warm, inviting, and private, a port hidden from the chaotic storm of posts that make up the contemporary internet.” This description is incredibly apt. Even now, six years later, logging into Peach feels like stepping into a slumber party with your friends, instead of opening Pandora’s box and bracing yourself for the horrors that lie within most social media platforms today.
While articles at the time of its launch described Peach as a platform “seeking to slide into the space in our digital lives somewhere between Twitter and Facebook”, I think Peach occupies the same space that LiveJournal or Tumblr did, with a few key differences. There is no centralized feed where you can see all of the content posted by people you follow. To see your friends’ posts, you have to go to their profiles. There’s also no ability to repost their content to your own feed like on Tumblr or Twitter, making likes and comments the only way to engage.
However, describing Peach by what it doesn’t have does it a disservice. It has a lot going for it, evidenced by the fact that some of us still continue using it even after its own founders have given up. I asked my friend Priya why she continues using the app and she said, “Tbh, it is kinda refreshing that nobody is trying to monetize it and that there aren't new updates being churned out every 2 minutes…. It feels pure. It’s a place to express yourself without being made crazy by ads and such.”
I agree with her. I also suspect that the things that make Peach “pure” led to its eventual demise—difficulties getting brands on Peach/monetizing the platform contributed to its abandonment. There’s no place to stick ads since there’s no centralized feed, and brands would have had to accrue an incredible amount of loyalty to get potential customers to 1. Follow them and 2. Make the effort to visit their profile. I suspect that the lack of advertising, combined with the intimate nature of the communities on the app, are what keeps its few remaining users returning to it.
To a certain subgroup of millennials who grew up online, Peach is an excellent, low-stakes way to share life updates and thoughts that are too intimate or personal for more public-facing sites like Facebook, Twitter, or even Tumblr. Like my friend and fellow Peach holdout Louie says, “It’s my way to keep in touch with a lot of people who I’ve known on the internet forever, and I love being able to keep in touch with each other’s lives through little cute personal titbits.” (Peach accounts replaced alt Twitter accounts: private Twitter accounts with much smaller followings where people can share more personal thoughts.)
Other features on Peach are more of a novelty, but still appreciated. The app lets you enter "magic words" that make it easy to do things like share what you’re currently listening to or watching, your location, or a randomized throwback photo from your phone’s photo library. One long-time favorite was the built-in game Peachball where users have to try and shoot a basketball into a hoop.
As for its developers, they’re nowhere to be seen. The app’s minimalist website, peach.cool, no longer exists, although according to Wayback Machine, it was still live as recently as September 2022. The last update, boasting “Bug fixes for iOS 11!”, was released in October 2017. The app’s Twitter account last tweeted in February 2019 soliciting feedback from users, which they continue to share in the replies, including one plea to, “Please, get your stuff together. You are my only outlet” and a eulogy: “Long live peach and it's short but feisty reign.”
Bugs run rampant on the app. For example, I haven’t received a notification from Peach for years, and every time I try to find contacts of mine on Peach, the app crashes. My friend Lily said, “I have to quit the app a lot and [the bugs] seem to get worse with every iOS update.” Priya pointed out, however, that “considering [developers have abandoned it], I feel like it could be a lot worse!”
Peach’s founder Dom Hofmann has moved onto web3, focusing on NFTs. It’s not clear if he knows that an app he’s moved on from continues to be valued by a small group of people. Based on the number of individuals who continue to tweet him whenever the app goes down, it's clear that Peach’s small but vocal user base try not to let him forget. It's hard to know just how many people are still using the app, but 23 people liked a November 27 tweet from Hofmann, responding to someone asking him to fix Peach. Nine additional people thanked him once he brought the app back online.
Internet culture writers have been eulogizing Peach since late 2016. While people have been scrambling to find a replacement for Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition, I’m left wondering if there are any social media platforms that have the same energy and fulfill the same purpose as Peach. Much like Vine before it, Peach is a rare app where you as the user don’t feel like the product, and much like Vine before it, this has been a major contributor to Peach’s demise. In an ideal world, tech founders would look at the cult popularity of platforms like Vine, Peach, and Tumblr, where many users have stubbornly remained despite many pitfalls, and realize the strong demand for a well-made social platform—one that prioritizes users. Peach’s hopeful holdouts are a clear example—hanging on even after the platform’s own creators have left the building with the lights still on.
Dec 4, 2022
·
5 min read
Peach Pals: The Last Holdouts On a Once-Celebrated, Now Dying, Twitter Replacement
Despite the app’s failure to serve as a viable Twitter alternative, it still has dedicated users, six years on
In 2016, one of the co-founders of Vine, the now-defunct but much-beloved short-form video platform, unveiled Peach, a new social media app. Thousands of users signed up following articles published by Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and The Guardian, comparing Peach to Tumblr and Twitter. Today, just over six years later, Peach is well and truly abandoned. Its last update was in October 2017, the app’s website is dead, and the company Twitter account hasn’t been used since 2019.
Despite all this however, there are users who still use the app, persistent bugs and all—myself included. In a 2019 article about Peach and how its remaining users navigate its imperfections, Bijan Stephen described the app as “a special place: Warm, inviting, and private, a port hidden from the chaotic storm of posts that make up the contemporary internet.” This description is incredibly apt. Even now, six years later, logging into Peach feels like stepping into a slumber party with your friends, instead of opening Pandora’s box and bracing yourself for the horrors that lie within most social media platforms today.
While articles at the time of its launch described Peach as a platform “seeking to slide into the space in our digital lives somewhere between Twitter and Facebook”, I think Peach occupies the same space that LiveJournal or Tumblr did, with a few key differences. There is no centralized feed where you can see all of the content posted by people you follow. To see your friends’ posts, you have to go to their profiles. There’s also no ability to repost their content to your own feed like on Tumblr or Twitter, making likes and comments the only way to engage.
However, describing Peach by what it doesn’t have does it a disservice. It has a lot going for it, evidenced by the fact that some of us still continue using it even after its own founders have given up. I asked my friend Priya why she continues using the app and she said, “Tbh, it is kinda refreshing that nobody is trying to monetize it and that there aren't new updates being churned out every 2 minutes…. It feels pure. It’s a place to express yourself without being made crazy by ads and such.”
I agree with her. I also suspect that the things that make Peach “pure” led to its eventual demise—difficulties getting brands on Peach/monetizing the platform contributed to its abandonment. There’s no place to stick ads since there’s no centralized feed, and brands would have had to accrue an incredible amount of loyalty to get potential customers to 1. Follow them and 2. Make the effort to visit their profile. I suspect that the lack of advertising, combined with the intimate nature of the communities on the app, are what keeps its few remaining users returning to it.
To a certain subgroup of millennials who grew up online, Peach is an excellent, low-stakes way to share life updates and thoughts that are too intimate or personal for more public-facing sites like Facebook, Twitter, or even Tumblr. Like my friend and fellow Peach holdout Louie says, “It’s my way to keep in touch with a lot of people who I’ve known on the internet forever, and I love being able to keep in touch with each other’s lives through little cute personal titbits.” (Peach accounts replaced alt Twitter accounts: private Twitter accounts with much smaller followings where people can share more personal thoughts.)
Other features on Peach are more of a novelty, but still appreciated. The app lets you enter "magic words" that make it easy to do things like share what you’re currently listening to or watching, your location, or a randomized throwback photo from your phone’s photo library. One long-time favorite was the built-in game Peachball where users have to try and shoot a basketball into a hoop.
As for its developers, they’re nowhere to be seen. The app’s minimalist website, peach.cool, no longer exists, although according to Wayback Machine, it was still live as recently as September 2022. The last update, boasting “Bug fixes for iOS 11!”, was released in October 2017. The app’s Twitter account last tweeted in February 2019 soliciting feedback from users, which they continue to share in the replies, including one plea to, “Please, get your stuff together. You are my only outlet” and a eulogy: “Long live peach and it's short but feisty reign.”
Bugs run rampant on the app. For example, I haven’t received a notification from Peach for years, and every time I try to find contacts of mine on Peach, the app crashes. My friend Lily said, “I have to quit the app a lot and [the bugs] seem to get worse with every iOS update.” Priya pointed out, however, that “considering [developers have abandoned it], I feel like it could be a lot worse!”
Peach’s founder Dom Hofmann has moved onto web3, focusing on NFTs. It’s not clear if he knows that an app he’s moved on from continues to be valued by a small group of people. Based on the number of individuals who continue to tweet him whenever the app goes down, it's clear that Peach’s small but vocal user base try not to let him forget. It's hard to know just how many people are still using the app, but 23 people liked a November 27 tweet from Hofmann, responding to someone asking him to fix Peach. Nine additional people thanked him once he brought the app back online.
Internet culture writers have been eulogizing Peach since late 2016. While people have been scrambling to find a replacement for Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition, I’m left wondering if there are any social media platforms that have the same energy and fulfill the same purpose as Peach. Much like Vine before it, Peach is a rare app where you as the user don’t feel like the product, and much like Vine before it, this has been a major contributor to Peach’s demise. In an ideal world, tech founders would look at the cult popularity of platforms like Vine, Peach, and Tumblr, where many users have stubbornly remained despite many pitfalls, and realize the strong demand for a well-made social platform—one that prioritizes users. Peach’s hopeful holdouts are a clear example—hanging on even after the platform’s own creators have left the building with the lights still on.
Dec 4, 2022
·
5 min read
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Subscribe to our weekly newsletter so you never miss a story.
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Subscribe to our weekly newsletter so you never miss a story.
