Can decentralized Twitter Bluesky catch up to Musk’s popularity?

Author: DeMan

After nearly a year of invitation-only use, the “decentralized Twitter” project Bluesky was opened to the public at the beginning of this month. Bluesky was founded with funding from Twitter (now X) co-founder Jack Dorsey, and the platform had about 3 million registered users before opening to the public.

Having a background in Twitter and also targeting Twitter, it is difficult to know whether Bluesky will hit the market later, but we might as well comprehensively analyze this project by understanding its development path and technical advantages.

First introduction to Bluesky: Based on the new AT protocol, the code is completely open source and allows developers to write by themselves

As a project funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey , Bluesky is seen as a promising microblogging platform with the potential to become an alternative to Elon Musk’s X, which was born in 2019. Before opening to the public, the platform had already attracted around 3 million registered users. Now, with anyone able to join, the young platform faces the challenge of how to stand out in the social media landscape, especially how to compete with Threads' 130 million monthly active users or even Mastodon's 1.8 million users.

Bluesky is similar in appearance and functionality to Twitter, but what makes it unique is its underlying technology. Bluesky began as a project within Twitter to build a decentralized social network infrastructure called AT Protocol. As a decentralized platform, Bluesky’s code is fully open source, which provides those outside the company with transparency into what is being built and how. Developers can even write their own code on top of the AT protocol to create anything from custom algorithms to entirely new social platforms.

It is worth mentioning that as early as 2021, Messari published a special article on the DeSoc (decentralized social) track and expressed clear expectations. There is no doubt that Bluesky is the earliest DeSoc (decentralized social) project.

Usually DeSoc (Decentralized Social) protocol connects personal account information as NFT with digital content, opening up all account and content relationships (social graph), providing developers with the ability to build diverse front-end applications Program platform. This model not only challenges the technical architecture of traditional social platforms, but also has a revolutionary impact on traditional social media with its anti-censorship and high composability characteristics.

In this context, Bluesky has developed steadily as an important player in the decentralized social field. Bluesky, incubated by Twitter, inherits and promotes the core concept of the DeSoc (decentralized social) protocol, aiming to build an open, decentralized social network. By connecting personal account information and digital content, Bluesky not only promotes the openness and accessibility of the social graph, but also provides developers with a flexible platform that enables them to build various applications based on the social graph to meet the diverse needs of users. .

Explore Bluesky’s underlying technology and operating model: a fully open and more flexible social network

Bluesky, as a public social network built on the AT protocol, aims to support open dialogue and promote Data portability.

On Bluesky, users’ posts, likes, and blocking operations are public, and anyone, even users without an invitation code, can see these contents on the Internet. This design allows users to view posts across the entire network across platforms no matter which server they join, and can easily take all data with them if they choose to change servers. However, a user's mute list subscription is private, although the mute list itself is public. It’s worth noting that Bluesky does not currently support setting up private profiles.

When a user deletes a post, the post is immediately removed from the user interface and the attached images are immediately deleted from the data store, but complete deletion of the text content takes longer. Bluesky retains user data through content-addressed archiving, allows account data to be migrated across servers, provides developers with a way to export copies of their data, and is also developing tools to make it easy for non-developer users to obtain their own data.

Bluesky’s openness and flexibility make it stand out in the decentralized social field, providing a free and decentralized social experience. This model enhances the censorship resistance and composability of social networks, creating a sustained impact on traditional social platforms. Bluesky not only proves the feasibility and potential of decentralized social networking, but also provides a powerful platform for users and developers who pursue open, free and innovative social experiences.

As a public welfare company, Bluesky is committed to promoting the large-scale adoption of open and decentralized public dialogue technologies, emphasizing the importance of user data ownership and decentralized social network architecture. By promoting the "atproto" protocol, Bluesky provides a user experience similar to traditional social media while ensuring the security and privacy of user data. What makes Bluesky unique is its commitment to open protocols, creating a transparent and free communication environment for developers and users. In addition, Bluesky meets users' needs for personalized services by providing new business models such as customized domain name services, while avoiding the privacy issues of relying on advertising revenue.

At the same time, Bluesky also announced that it will introduce an experimental version of Open Federation later this month, and developers will be able to build their own independent servers, just like Mastodon has thousands of different instances. Bluesky users will be able to choose which server to use, and if they change their mind, they can migrate to a different server without losing all their posts, followers, and watchlists.

In addition, Bluesky will also allow individual users or organizations to create their own content moderation services, which other users can subscribe to. For example, a fact-checking organization could run a labeling service and label posts as "partly false," "misleading," or other categories. Users who trust the organization can then subscribe to their label. Any labels posted by fact-checking organizations will be visible on the posts themselves as users scroll through the app.

Excessive decentralization will inevitably lead to criticism in terms of privacy and security, but Bluesky still completed huge financing

On May 7, 2023, criticism of Bluesky appeared on the Internet Voices, these voices focus on Bluesky's misleading in its self-promotion as an open network. These criticisms focus on three areas: the promotion of the open network, the promise of follower and identity preservation, and the self-promotion of itself as a protocol ("atproto"). These accusations triggered widespread concern and discussion about Bluesky’s future development at the time.

Despite various comments in the community, Bluesky experienced a critical moment on July 2, 2023, when Elon Musk launched a limited traffic policy, which restricted users’ access to Twitter. The scope of activities has triggered extensive discussions and user dissatisfaction. In this context, Bluesky, as an emerging social media platform, has suddenly become the focus of many users looking for an alternative to Twitter.

Following this, on July 5, 2023, Bluesky announced that it had successfully obtained US$8 million in financing. During the financing process, Bluesky attracted a series of investors consistent with its values, including investments led by the community. company Neo, as well as a group of outstanding partners such as Ali Partovi and Suzanne Xie. In addition, many industry leaders and innovators, including Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda, Red Hat’s Bob Young, and Replit’s Amjad Masad, have also joined Bluesky’s investors.

The funds from this round of financing will be used to expand the Bluesky team, manage growing operational and infrastructure costs, and promote the growth of the AT protocol ecosystem and Bluesky applications. In addition, Bluesky plans to experiment with different strategies and services to explore ways to provide real value to users, and promises to continue sharing their learning and discoveries with the public in the process of building a sustainable social network. The launch of the first paid service, the custom domain name service, demonstrates Bluesky's innovative attempts to find alternatives to traditional advertising models to achieve profitability.

Regarding the doubts about decentralized social networking and the anxiety about related risks, Blusky officially chose to respond directly, which can also appropriately explain why this project can complete a huge amount amidst market doubts. Financing.

Jay Graber, CEO of the Bluesky platform, once said that the advantage of decentralization is that it can try multiple changes in parallel, so it will not be blocked by changes in a single organization. The way Bluesky is built allows virtually anyone to make changes to the product, which gives users more control and the ability to customize their social media experience.

With constant criticism and questioning, Bluesky may not be able to fully realize its vision of a decentralized social application

In the face of early criticism, Bluesky did not choose to avoid it, but took a series of practical actions to respond to market and user concerns.

First of all, Bluesky clearly distinguished the relationship between the company and the "atproto" protocol it developed, emphasizing that although Bluesky as a company participated in the development of the protocol, "atproto" as an open source protocol, its The original intention of the design is to promote decentralization and openness in the social media field. In order to eliminate external doubts about the openness of the protocol, Bluesky not only disclosed the source code of the protocol, but also encouraged and supported third-party developers to develop their own applications based on the protocol. This move effectively demonstrated Bluesky's sincerity in its commitment to open networks.

Secondly, regarding the issues of user identity and follower retention, Bluesky ensures that users’ data and social connections on the platform can be protected through technological innovation. Bluesky takes advantage of the decentralized nature to enable users to move freely between different service providers without losing their social networks. This kind of design centered on user rights not only improves user experience, but also sets a new benchmark for the social media industry.

Finally, from a long-term perspective, Bluesky faces both challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, it needs to continue to enhance user trust and resolve external doubts about its protocol and business model; on the other hand, as social media users become more aware of privacy and data ownership, Bluesky’s decentralization and openness principles may become its greatest competitive advantage. Whether Bluesky can become an important force in the social media field over time is worthy of continued observation by everyone who pays attention to the development trends of social media.