What is BlueSky Social and How Can you Join?
For better or worse, Twitter is changing. From the removal of blue checkmarks to the advent of their new subscription service, things are looking little different on the Elon Musk-run social media platform.
As a result, some users have started to look for an alternative. One social platform that is starting to generate some buzz is called ‘Bluesky’.
So what is Bluesky?
Bluesky is a new social media platform that is basically being viewed as a Twitter alternative because the two share so many similarities. The app itself is built on Authenticated Transport Protocols, which is a social media framework created by Bluesky themselves that is made up of a network of many different sites. Originally only available for iOS, Bluesky is now available on android devices as well.
As of the end of April, Bloomberg stated that Bluesky had about 50,000 users.
The Bluesky project began in 2019. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is on the board of directors, and was so while he was still CEO of Twitter. Jay Graber is Bluesky’s CEO.
As of the writing of this post, SpaceBound Solutions is still on the waitlist to join Bluesky. However, judging by the looks of the app via screenshots in the Google Play store, the app looks virtually identical to twitter. With the exception of a slightly different font and a different set of icons to help the user navigate the app, users could easily confuse the two if scrolling through them one right after the other.
Visually Bluesky might mirror Twitter, however functionally the app does have its differences. For instance, on Bluesky you can set your handle as your domain. In a blog by the company, they state that “For example, a newsroom like NPR could set their handle to be @npr.com. Then, any journalist that NPR wants to verify could use subdomains to set their handles to be @name.npr.com. Brand accounts could set their handle to be their domain as well.”
Another way Bluesky differentiates itself from Twitter comes in the way content is moderated. The new platform is already using automated moderating, and they are working on a method that would be “something similar to shared mute/block lists.” Currently, the content being showed to users on their feed is determined by an algorithm, however in the future the company would like to give users the option to pick from a variety of algorithms that would determine what they see.
Ben Collins, a reporter for NBC News tweeted that Bluesky Social “works and looks and feels just like (Twitter),” and he also praised Bluesky’s “moderation, desktop experience and reliability.” Apple users seem to agree so far, as Bluesky has a 4.1 star rating in the App Store. So far Android users who have reviewed the app, (which amount to double the size of apple users despite being released after) have only given it 2.3 stars.
Bluesky is currently in beta and is not widely available to the public just yet - you’ll have to sign up for their waitlist and hope you get an email if you’d like to try things out. They are giving invite codes to people who are lucky enough to have been selected to try the app, so if you know someone using Bluesky you could always see if they’d be willing to give you their code. Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait for an invite as Graber says that Bluesky will remain invite-only until it’s further along in development.
Story via CNET
