Former Twitter CEO launches his own social network Bluesky

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who has long promoted the idea of a «free and open protocol» for social networks, has announced the start of beta testing of his own platform. The decentralized social network Bluesky has already appeared in the App Store, but it is currently available only to testers.

Bluesky is based on the decentralized AT protocol, which is used by another Twitter competitor, the Mastodon social network. The decentralized protocol aims to limit corporate and government influence on social networks in general.

According to data. ai, the Bluesky app for iOS debuted on February 17, 2023. The app has been installed about 2000 times. By whom exactly? Beta testers who analyze the social network and look for possible problems. Bluesky is not yet available on Google Play.

Chronologically, the relationship between Bluesky, Twitter, Dorsey, and Musk looks quite interesting: the Bluesky project has been developed at Twitter since 2019, when Jack Dorsey was CEO. Twitter has been funding Bluesky for many years. After Dorsey left Twitter, he took a seat on Bluesky’s board of directors. Previously, Musk and Dorsey discussed the idea of using an open source protocol. Last year, Bluesky received 13 million from Twitter. It is unclear if and how the two projects will continue to be interconnected.

TechCrunch journalists who have worked with Bluesky have emphasized that the new social network is functional, simple, and very similar to Twitter. «There's something ironic about leaving Twitter and using a program that looks and feels like Twitter,» wrote one of the TechCrunch specialists.

In early February, Jack Dorsey supported a new decentralized app called Damus, which is also considered a Twitter competitor. «I firmly believe that any content created by someone for the Internet should remain until the original author decides to remove it. It should always be accessible and targeted. Deletion and suspension of posting are unacceptable,» Dorsey wrote in his blog.