grubble

what big social got wrong

You signed up to keep in touch with the people who matter. You ended up performing for strangers.

Mainstream social platforms have a business model that's at odds with what almost everyone signed up for. They sell your attention to advertisers, so the product has to keep you scrolling. It does that with algorithms that elevate outrage, with infinite feeds that have no stopping point, with vanity metrics that turn every share into a tiny audition, and with push notifications that pull you back when you'd rather have stopped.

None of that is what you wanted. You wanted to know how your dad was getting on, what your friend cooked for dinner, the photo an old colleague took at the weekend. You wanted small moments, not a stage. You wanted to leave a kind word under one and know there was something nice waiting again on Tuesday morning, and then to put the phone down.

The platforms can't give you that, because that's not what they're for.

a deliberately different shape

Built like a kitchen table,
not a feed.

Every product decision grubble makes is filtered through one principle, which is also the tagline: small social, on purpose. That principle has shapes, and you can see them in the product:

• Invite-only. Nobody finds you by accident. You arrive because someone you know wanted you here.
• Chronological only. No algorithm choosing what you see, in what order, optimised for anything other than time.
• "You're caught up." Visits end. The home tab is a finite snapshot of what's new since you were last here, and when you've seen it you've seen it. No bottomless scroll back through history.
• No resharing, no recommendations. You only see posts from people you've connected with. There is no For You feed because there is no For You.
• No vanity metrics, no streaks. Hearts and replies exist because they're how people are kind to each other, but there are no leaderboards and no "X days in a row" guilt-trips.
• No push notifications. grubble will never tap you on the shoulder. If you want to come and look, you come and look.
• No ads, no trackers, no analytics. We don't sell ads, so we don't have to sell your attention. No third-party scripts, no pixels, no ad networks, no fingerprinting.
• Magic-link sign-in. No passwords. No "sign in with Google", and so no shadow profile of you held by a third party.
• Take it with you, or delete it. Download a copy of everything we hold about you, any time. Delete it all, any time. Nothing is held hostage.

what it looks like today

Photos and captions,
set on the page like prints.

The first shape grubble takes is photos and captions. Square photos (one or several, swipeable as a carousel), shared only with the people you've chosen, set on a calm cream-and-sage page in light typography that feels closer to a photo album than a feed. A day's worth of posts in one quiet visit. Then the page closes, and asks you if it's time for a coffee.

Photos are the start, not the whole of it. Other quiet ways of staying close are on the way, added one at a time and only when they help you connect, never to chase engagement. The constraints don't change: invite-only, chronological, no push, no algorithm.

how it pays for itself

Two pounds a month.
Because you're a customer, not the product.

Free social platforms aren't free. You pay for them with your attention, with your data, and with the slow drag of mechanics designed to extract more of both. grubble doesn't run ads, so it doesn't have to fight for your time. It doesn't sell your data, so it doesn't have to harvest it. And it isn't venture-funded, so there's no pressure to grow at any cost.

Two pounds a month pays for the server, the photo storage, the email infrastructure, and the time it takes one person to keep it running carefully. Nothing more, nothing less. Every user is a customer. Every product decision is made for you, because the money's coming from you.