Former Twitter CEO comes with competing app
In any case, Elon’s takeover of social media platform Twitter has been good for the news. The shy flirting beforehand, the shocking amount of the amount offered (44 billion dollars) and of course the drama that soon started to take place when Elon got wet feet. A judge had to be involved before the deal was actually consummated.
The party didn’t stop there, Elon immediately fired many staff, including top managers. As a result, there was much speculation about his plans for the platform and he brought back accounts that had been banned for violating the rules. Enumerating why Elon and Twitter got into trouble in the past six months is a study in itself. The three examples above are just a tip of the veil.
The whole thing therefore did not take place without the necessary criticism. Most votes are critical more than half a year after the takeover. It is therefore not surprising that a new player is now entering the market that is attracting a lot of attention. Read more about this new player in this article.
Same developer, new idea
Jack Dorsey was one of the people behind Twitter, then ‘just’ a website, its launch in 2006. At the end of 2021, he stepped down as CEO at Twitter and handed over the baton to Parag Agrawal. Agrawal has ultimately held this position for less than a year and was therefore dismissed by Musk in October of last year. Now Dorsey comes with a new app. On the surface it looks a lot like Twitter, but under the hood it’s definitely a different beast.
The app, called Bluesky, runs on a decentralized network. The idea is that users have more control over how the app runs, how their data is stored and how content on the app is moderated. In February, Bluesky was already available for iOS and from last month also for Android. New social media apps are of course nothing new in themselves. However, this time something seems to be going on. Whether it concerns Dorsey’s ‘star power’ or the power of the app itself remains to be seen. Nevertheless, a few (for Americans) big names have already switched. For example, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and model Chrissy Teigan.
Bluesky calls itself “a new social network for microblogging.” For people who don’t speak in buzzwords, that means the usual posting of short messages on a timeline. Exactly the same as Twitter so far. But there are at least two important differences: no hashtags and no direct messages.
No company and decentralized
Bluesky started as an independent part of Twitter while the latter was still controlled by Dorsey. It became an independent organization in February 2022. And if it’s up to Dorsey, it will remain an organization and not a company. Last year, he Tweeted that the fact that Twitter has become a business is his biggest regret. He even indicated that his departure from Twitter was mainly motivated by this fact. Dorsey believes that a service remains a protocol and can be out of the hands of a single company or government. His vision for Bluesky is one of an open community where everyone, explicitly named his companies and organizations, researchers and civic leaders, is welcome. But all of that, Dorsey said in 2019, doesn’t happen in one day.
Decentralization in this case means that user data can be stored on independent servers and not just on servers owned by, in this case, Bluesky. In the future, users could even use their own servers for this purpose, which they can share with communities of their choice. This breaks with the way Twitter uses user data, and therefore how algorithms determine what you see.
For now, by invitation only
Bluesky is currently only available by invitation. Just downloading the app is therefore of little use for the time being unless you know someone who already uses the app. Existing users receive a code every two weeks with which they can give someone access to the app. Bluesky’s exclusivity only seems to increase the hype surrounding the app.
