Jack Dorsey, co-founder of the social networking platform Twitter, has been progressing with Bluesky – a decentralized Twitter alternative – as a mobile application entering private beta testing.
Bluesky has hit the Apple app store as an invite-only app, allowing certain people to try new social experiences by creating an account via an invite code.
According to a report by TechCrunch, the Bluesky iOS application debuted on February 17, amassing about 2,000 installs on February 28. The app is reportedly not yet available for Android testers on Google Play.
In the preview of the Bluesky app store, the competing app looks like Twitter, with an interface that has many features like Twitter, including how to manage, followers, posts and replies are displayed. In a similar style to Twitter, the Bluesky app feed also has likes, comments and reposts.
According to TechCrunch, the app allows users to create posts of up to 265 characters or just less than Twitter’s 280 characters. Instead of Twitter’s “What’s going on?” Bluesky asked, “What’s wrong?” Bluesky users can share, mute and block accounts, while more advanced tools, such as adding to lists, are not yet available.
Despite being similar to Twitter, Bluesky is set to have a number of technical features designed to be very different from social media giant Elon Musk. The platform aims to provide a decentralized social network protocol, which is expected to make user data free from government or corporate influence.
Bluesky is built on the AT protocol, a new federated social network that combines ideas from the latest decentralized technologies. Originally known as the authentication transfer protocol, or ADX, the AT protocol is Bluesky’s main effort to enable a new way for servers to communicate with each other, allowing individuals and businesses to host themselves and have multiple websites instead of one.
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As previously reported, Bluesky released its first batch of code in early May 2022, a few weeks before Dorsey stepped down from Twitter’s board of directors. In October, it officially introduced the Bluesky social application and the AT protocol, which is almost three years after Dorsey launched the project with the support of Twitter in 2019.
The news comes in the midst of Dorsey being reported mobile some Bitcoin (BTC) use another social protocol, Nostr. Damus, the first mobile application using the protocol, was published in the application store in February 2023.