– It already has more than 5,000 downloads with a total user base of currently 25,000 strong
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.
Since his departure from Twitter in late 2021, co-founder Jack Dorsey has been working on an alternative to the microblogging site, now owned by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk. Bluesky was initially rolled out to iOS devices in February, and it’s now finally come to Android.
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.
If you plan to download the app and post updates about your dislike of Twitter, you’ll still have to wait. Access to Bluesky is by invitation only, so you must sign up for the waitlist or get an invitation from someone already on it. Either way, there isn’t a whole of action going on there now, as the community is only around 25,000 people. But that could change quickly when more people are allowed in, potentially exploding the user base.
At the time of writing, the Android app, spotted by The Verge, is only listed in the Google Play Store as having more than 5,000 downloads, requires Android 5.0 or higher, and is about 30 megabytes. It has a 265-character limit, which is a lot fewer characters (not to mention easier to digest) than Twitter’s recent update of 10,000 characters for Twitter Blue subscribers.
Currently, the decentralized Twitter alternative has some limitations aside from the tiny number of users. You can’t send people direct messages (yet), and some users are not exactly thrilled that it looks and feels like a Twitter ripoff. The decentralized nature of the platform also means your username will look similar to that of Mastodon, where you must join a hosting provider. You and your friends might not be on the same provider, making it somewhat difficult to track down someone.
The biggest drawcard for those that want to break away from Twitter is the composable moderation of Bluesky.
Keeping your Twitter feed sanitized is a daily struggle, but Bluesky is combining the automated labeling of centralized social sites with the service-level admin decisions of federated networks. Composable moderation lets users and administrators come up with and share labeling rules to improve the quality of your feed.
The platform’s Jay Graber explained that Bluesky’s open, composable labeling system is broken down into three categories. Without needing a personal data server, anyone can define and apply labels to content. Then, third-party services or custom algorithms can automatically generate labels, and finally, any service or person in the network can choose how these labels get used.