Jack Dorsey’s Twitter Competitor ‘Bluesky’ Arrives On The App Store

There’s a new competitor looking to take over Twitter’s place in the social media sphere, and in an interesting twist, it’s helmed by the same brain that originally founded the blue bird application.

Dubbed ‘Bluesky’, Jack Dorsey’s latest venture has launched its beta test on the Apple App Store, hinting that it could soon be open to the public. The site was meant to be a “decentralized social network” as part of Twitter but later became its own platform.

“Both Twitter and Bluesky realized that our independence is important to the success of the project, which is why we established an independent company to ensure that we serve the broadest possible interests,” the firm announced last year.

At the moment, Bluesky can only be joined if you’ve received an invitation, though eager users looking to be early adopters of the application can register to be part of the waiting list.

The most important question, naturally, is what the differences between Bluesky and Twitter are, and if users who are unhappy with the numerous changes since Elon Musk’s takeover will be incentivized to jump over to the newer platform.

According to TechCrunch, Bluesky’s interface remains similar to Twitter, though it asks users “What’s up?” instead of the iconic “What’s happening?” The site allows users to add 256 characters and upload pictures with the push of a plus button.

Furthermore, the network allows users to view updates on the ‘Home’ timeline in two separate feeds: posts or posts and replies, so one can toggle between both options depending on what they’re looking for.

The publication noted that the ‘Discover’ tab at the bottom of the site’s navigation appears useful, offering “who to follow” suggestions and a real-time feed of recent posts. Each post can be replied to, retweeted, liked, and reported, just like Twitter.

As per Gizmodo, while there don’t seem to be major differences between Twitter and Bluesky, Dorsey has positioned the latter as a way for users to fight back against content moderation on larger platforms.

He believed this would reduce the power these centralized sites had in deciding who was allowed to speak, and how conversations should be moderated.

“We are trying to do our part by funding an initiative around an open decentralized standard for social media. Our goal is to be a client of that standard for the public conversation layer of the internet. We call it Bluesky,” Dorsey explained in 2021.

[via Gizmodo and TechCrunch, images via Bluesky Social]