Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former Twitter CEO launched Bluesky, a social media platform that provides an alternative to the microblogging platform, on Android.
“We‘re building the AT Protocol, a new foundation for social networking which gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build, and users a choice in their experience,” the Bluesky website said.
The goal of Bluesky is to create an open and decentralised social media protocol that is not controlled by any single entity. The Bluesky project aims to address some of the problems and criticisms that have been levelled at social media platforms in recent years, including issues with content moderation, privacy, and data ownership.
By creating a decentralised protocol, the hope is that Bluesky can provide a more transparent and equitable social media experience for users, without the need for a centralised authority to regulate and control the platform.
It remains to be seen how successful the Bluesky project will be in achieving its ambitious goals. However, with the backing of someone as influential and experienced as Jack Dorsey, it is certainly a project to keep an eye on in the coming years.
The “social internet” of the future will provide users with more alternatives with “independence from platforms,” claims the app’s website.
The software, which can only be accessed with an invite code, is still under development. In 2019, Dorsey launched Bluesky as a side business with funding from Twitter. It was initially made available to iOS users in late February.
According to TechCrunch, Bluesky does not include fundamental capabilities like tracking likes or bookmarks, direct conversations, editing tweets, quote-tweeting, or utilising hashtags that are accessible on Twitter at launch.
It is also incorporating decentralisation into its own protocol, the AT Protocol, rather than building on the work already done on ActivityPub, the protocol powering Mastodon, an open-source Twitter alternative, and a variety of other decentralised apps in the larger “Fediverse,” the term for these connected servers hosting free, open-source web publishing software.
The demand for the application has been growing and has 20,000 active users currently.
As per reports, when someone created a post in Bluesky the message that pops up is “What’s up?” unlike in Twitter where it asks “What’s happening?” Bluesky’s user interface has been kept straightforward, and Twitter’s signature blue colour has been preserved. Users may write posts with up to 256 characters and upload photos by just hitting the app’s plus button.
