Jack Dorsey Launches Twitter Rival ‘Bluesky’

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey today launched the interface of the decentralized Twitter alternative, Bluesky.

Bluesky mobile application enters private beta testing and it hit the Apple app store as an invite-only app. The account can be created via an invite code.

The Bluesky IOS app debuted on February 17 and has more than 2000 installs as of February 28. Bluesky is not available for Android testers on Google Play, yet.

Jack Dorsey’s Twitter alternative does not look much different from Twitter’s. The interface has a lot of Twitter-like features, that include handles, followers, posts, and replies. Needless to say, Bluesky’s feed also has like, reposts, and comments.

Bluesky allows users to create a post of up to 265 characters while Twitter allows a 280-character post. Twitter’s ‘What’s happening?’ is replaced in Bluesky with ‘What’s up?’. Bluesky users can also mute, block and share accounts.

Apart from the similarities with Twitter, Bluesky seems to provide a decentralized social network protocol, which is expected to make its user data free from influence by any government or corporation.

Bluesky is built on the AT protocol, a new federated social network that integrates ideas from the latest decentralized technologies. Originally known as the authenticated 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 self-host and have multiple websites instead of one.

Jack Dorsey reportedly released the first batch of code for Bluesky in early May 2022, just a few weeks after Dorsey exited Twitter’s board of directors.