Twitter announced a new project called Bluesky in 2019. The initiative was to make an open and decentralised standard for social media. Not in any kind of association with Twitter, Bluesky was under wraps for quite some time. The Jack Dorsey-founded Twitter alternative will be now available on the Apple App Store as an invite-only beta, which means it might have a subsequent public launch in time to come.
Source: The Indian Express
The App Store listing also provides us a teaser of how the decentralised social media platform will be like. Based on the ‘Authenticated Transfer Protocol’ (ATP), which Bluesky describes as a place where ‘separate social networks exist within a single hub’, is quite similar to Mastodon’s ActivityHub, which is assisted by the ATP to create a federated and decentralised network. The platform is designed in such a way users that will enable users to transfer their account and data from one Bluesky provider to another and the app also provides refined control over what users see on their network.
As seen from the pictures so far, the Bluesky app on mobile has a close resemblance to Twitter’s user interface. It looks like Bluesky took several features and user elements with separate tabs for Home, Search and Notifications. The timeline and the profile page also look and feel like Twitter.
As per a report by TechCrunch, “Bluesky is like a bare-bones version of Twitter. Users can create their own handles which will be visible in @username.bsky.social along with the display name in bold. It also has a ‘Plus’ button, which is used to create a post of up to 256 characters including images, similar to Twitter.”
It also allows users to follow individuals and view what they shared in the home tab. Even profiles are separated in the same section like Twitter, where you are able to check the user’s posts and replies. Until now, the platform does not seem to have the feature to directly message others.
However, the Bluesky website enables users join the waitlist and so far, it has given no information on how many testers the network will first be available to or when it will be accessible to the wider public.
Bluesky has been downloaded at least 2,000 times since it was launched in the iOS store on February 17. The Bluesky team had shared updates of the Twitter ‘substitute’ in its October 2022 blog.
“It’s rare for a project to be set up like this. We’re using our freedom to focus on building, and will work towards our vision of a durable protocol for public conversation no matter what happens,” said the company.
