Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is building Bluesky, a social media platform that he touted as ‘decentralized Twitter’ back when it was launched in 2019. However, it was kept as an independent entity that received $13 million from Twitter as funding. As of now, the platform is in the private beta testing stage and already has around 30,000 signups waiting to try out the app’s beta version. What’s it offering? It’s not yet clear what Blueksky will eventually look like but the aim is to create a new “decentralized social network”.
In its blog post, Bluesky said it should be coming to the public “soon.” This highly anticipated platform is being described as a rival to Twitter as well as to other platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. “It’s a competitor to any company trying to own the underlying fundamentals for social media or the data of the people using it,” Dorsey tweeted.
On Tuesday, Bluesky announced its new AT protocol, an improvement over its previous ADX protocol. The app will have strong security protocols and will use an Authenticated Transfer Protocol, the company said adding that it will be a social network that will be managed by various sites, rather than using a single location to have its servers. Account portability, algorithmic choice, interoperation, and performance- are the factors that make AT protocol unique.
“The ‘AT Protocol’ is a new federated social network,” the company said. “It integrates ideas from the latest decentralized technologies into a simple, fast, and open network.”
“The word “Bluesky” evokes a wide-open space of possibility. It was the original name for this project before it took shape, and continues to be the name of our company. We’re calling the application we’re building Bluesky because it will be a portal to the world of possibility on top of the AT Protocol,” says the blog.
