Bluesky, a new microblogging platform funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has removed its waitlist and is now open to everyone.
Bluesky, which has been in beta for almost a year, aims to offer an alternative to Elon Musk’s X, as well as other social networks. Bluesky claims to have had around 3 million registrations before opening to the public, which is impressive for a new platform, but remains far behind Threads’ 130 million monthly active users, or even Mastodon’s 1.8 million.
However, Bluesky has a few tricks up its sleeve to convince users. One is Bluesky’s unique approach to social networking, which is based on decentralization and open source. Bluesky leverages the AT protocol, a decentralized infrastructure that allows multiple social networks to interact with each other through a common standard. The AT protocol is also open source, meaning anyone can see how it works and contribute to its development. Developers can even create their own social networks based on the AT protocol or customize existing networks.
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Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky, explained that decentralization allows for more innovation and diversity in social mediabecause it removes the bottleneck of control of the platform by a single organization.
Unlike centralized platforms like Instagram, where users must accept changes made by the company, Bluesky users can choose which features and algorithms they want to use, or move to another network if they are not satisfied . Bluesky users can also create their own content moderation services and subscribe to those they trust.
Today, Bluesky’s main competitor is Mastodon, another decentralized and open source social network that has been around since 2016. Mastodon also uses a protocol called ActivityPub, which is compatible with the AT protocol. However, it is much more complicated to handle, which could well convince many Internet users to try the experience. We will now have to see whether or not this opening to the public will be enough to worry Elon Musk.