Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is taking on Elon Musk with Bluesky

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter last year, the social media platform has been seeing a lot of changes. The long-time users of the microblogging website have been mostly critical of these changes, and have even accused the Tesla CEO of destroying the platform.

But the thing is, there has been no good alternative to Twitter which can be a great source of real-time news and updates, follows the short-form content rule, and has high interactivity.

Platforms like Mastodon, Gab, and Parler have tried to be an alternative, but none of them have come close to the popularity of Twitter. But now, Bluesky, a social-media app quite similar to Twitter, has hit the app stores. The platform which is backed by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, has seen a huge jump in the number of users in the last few days.

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform with a very Twitter-like look and features. The company says it is building a protocol that can make social networks work more like email, blogs, or phone numbers.

The app, which launched in a closed beta on iOS in February and on Android in April, calls itself "a new social network for microblogging." Just like with Twitter, users on the platform can post and follow short updates on a timeline. However, as of now there are no hashtags and there is no option to send direct messages.

According to data.ai, Bluesky has been downloaded more than 375,000 times from the Apple App Store and the waitlist continues to be flooded with signup requests. On the Google Play Store, Bluesky is described as having been downloaded more than 100,000 times, reported CNN.

Bluesky was initially a project kicked off by Jack Dorsey when he was CEO of Twitter in 2019. Bluesky has been an independent company since its formation in 2021. In late 2022, Twitter chose to sever the service agreement with Bluesky, and Bluesky agreed.

Going back to the early days of the web?

According to Bluesky, the protocol it has built, the AT Protocol, wants to allow modern social media to work more like the early days of the web when anyone could put up a blog or use RSS to subscribe to several blogs.

"We believe this will unlock a new era of experimentation and innovation in social media. Researchers and communities will have the ability to jump in to help solve the problems social networks currently face, and developers will be able to experiment with many new forms of interaction," the company said.

What is the AT Protocol?

The AT (Authenticated Transfer) Protocol is an open-source framework for building social apps, meaning people have transparency into how it is built and what is being developed. It creates a standard format for user identity, follows, and data on social apps, allowing apps to interoperate and users to move across them freely. It is a federated network with account portability.

Bluesky gives an analogy to explain this: "Every time you create an account on a social platform, it's like moving to a new city. You make friends and create posts, which is like filling your house with the furniture you made. But on centralized social platforms, if you leave, it's like leaving all your friends behind with no way to contact them, and leaving your house behind without being able to take anything with you. Leaving a centralized site and starting over from scratch is very hard."

How can you use the Bluesky app?

The app is still only available as an invite-only beta. Existing users get one invite code to share with someone every two weeks they're on the app, which is quite similar to what we saw with the Clubhouse app.

With the demand for the app seeing an unprecedented rise, Bluesky said plans to grow the invite system in a way that preserves its focus on protocol development. Bluesky said it is using the invite codes because social networks can be abused by spammers and bad actors who might want to manipulate the public conversation.

Bluesky invites have become such a hot commodity that they've been selling for anywhere between $120 to as much as $400 on eBay in recent days, reported TechCrunch.

An alternative to Twitter?

Even though the app is seeing a big jump in the number of users, and the people on Twitter have been fed up with the modification on the platform, it is too early to say that Bluesky can be an alternative to the micro-blogging website.

Mastodon at one point was seen by many as a replacement of Twitter, but that hype died after a while.

The decentralized structure, the AT Protocol, and people on Twitter looking fo something new could work for Bluesky in the beginning, but for it to be a real alternative to Twitter, it would have to get many things right and keep evolving with time.