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Bluesky Social: The New Twitter?
With Elon Musk’s recent changes and shifts to the app, such as Twitter Blue, many Twitter users started to look for other alternatives. One to jump on that market was Twitter’s very own co-founder, Jack Dorsey.
So, what is this Bluesky App, and will it truly replace Twitter?
What is Bluesky Social?
In February 2023, Bluesky Social arrived at app stores, looking rather similar to Twitter’s interface. The features don’t stray too far away from Twitter either. However, there’s one main difference: decentralization.
Bluesky is a microblogging social app, with many similarities to Twitter such as an almost identical interface, community-based features, and algorithmic choice and personalization.
However, the main difference is Bluesky is building an AT Protocol, allowing users to see how this app is being built, with full transparency.
What is the Bluesky AT Protocol?
Designed by Bluesky, the AT Protocol, also known as atproto, is a new networking technology focusing on decentralizing power on social media apps. This allows users to do a few different things:
- Connect with anyone on any service that’s using the AT Protocol.
- Control what content you view, through an open market of algorithms.
- Create one identity Bluesky and transfer this to other platforms using the AT Protocol.
Bluesky’s goal is to open the marketplace for social media networks, to challenge larger networks, such as Twitter and Facebook.
This AT Protocol is now making it possible for more than one organization to own a social network. This will allow researchers and users to openly communicate and help solve issues on the app, to continue to improve and develop user experiences.
How to join Bluesky Social
Right now, there are only 50,000 users on the app, with over a million on the waiting list. These existing users represent public figures and large organizations, such as NPR.
Bluesky is still in beta, as they finish building the new AT Protocol. However, anyone can join the waitlist by heading to this link and entering an email address.
Existing Bluesky users are given one invite code every two weeks, and if users continue to invite trustworthy users, the app rewards them with more invite codes.
Bluesky wants to limit the amount of scammers on networks, thus they want to continue to use invite codes, allowing users to build their own communities.
How to use Bluesky Social
Users can create a Bluesky account and choose a username, which will appear as @username.bsky.social. Alternatively, users can turn their domain name into the username.
In terms of the actual content and communication possibilities, it functions more or less like Twitter. Users can create posts of up to 256 characters, add photos, reply to posts, retweet, like, and share content with other apps.
Three different tabs will appear, “Home”, “What’s Hot”, and the “Discover” tab. You can search and follow users in the “Home” tab, view trending posts in the “What’s Hot” tab and view suggested followers and recent Bluesky updates in the “Discovery” tab.
Users can also flag and report content, which is moderated through automated filtering, manual admin edits, and community labeling. These labels can be created by any user in the network.
Profiles will consist of the user’s handle, a profile picture, a background photo, a bio, how many followers they have, and how many they are following.
One stark difference between Bluesky Social and Twitter is, as of now, there is no private messaging.
Conclusions
Although it’s unlikely Twitter will be completely taken out by Bluesky, we do know that this is changing the digital ecosystem tremendously. Decentralization in social networks has been long gone, as we have seen smaller and smaller groups centralize authority over networks, such as Twitter and Facebook.
The goal of Bluesky Social is to go back to the days when anyone could publish a blog, or use a RSS to subscribe to multiple blog sites.
This new open-source app may also allow for freedom in content creation and accessibility.
When Twitter allowed free public access to its API, many companies including Metricool, could create tools to support creators, marketers, and business owners in growing their brands.
However, with recent changes to its API, many businesses had to make a big decision on if they want to pay for this access. Bluesky Social launched at a convenient time, announcing its free API access to all users. This alone could be a motive for users to switch over to Bluesky in the coming months.