After five years of brewing, the Twitter of the Web3 world has officially launched, but it seems a bit out of sync with the times

After nearly a year of invite-only usage, the "decentralized Twitter" project Bluesky has opened to the public earlier this month. Funded by Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X), the platform had already attracted around 3 million registered users before its public launch.

With a background from Twitter and aiming to compete with it, it is currently uncertain whether Bluesky will explode in the market later on. However, we can comprehensively analyze this project by understanding its development path and technological advantages.

Getting to Know Bluesky: Based on the New AT Protocol, Fully Open Source and Allows Developers to Write Their Own Code

As a project funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky is seen as a promising microblogging platform with the potential to become a substitute for Elon Musk's X. It was born in 2019 and had attracted about 3 million registered users before opening to the public. Now, with anyone able to join, this young platform faces the challenge of standing out in the social media space, especially in competition with Threads' 130 million monthly active users and even Mastodon's 1.8 million users.

Bluesky resembles Twitter in appearance and functionality, but its uniqueness lies in its underlying technology. Bluesky was originally an internal project at Twitter aimed at building a decentralized social network infrastructure called the AT protocol. As a decentralized platform, Bluesky's code is fully open source, providing transparency to those outside the company regarding the content and methods being built. Developers can even write their own code on top of the AT protocol, creating anything from custom algorithms to entirely new social platforms.

It is worth mentioning that as early as 2021, Messari published a special study on the DeSoc (decentralized social) track and expressed a clear expectation. Undoubtedly, Bluesky is one of the earliest DeSoc (decentralized social) projects.

Typically, DeSoc (decentralized social) protocols connect individual account profiles as NFTs with digital content, opening all account and content relationships (social graphs) and providing developers with a platform to build diverse front-end applications. 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 features.

In this context, Bluesky, as an important player in the decentralized social space, is steadily developing. Incubated by Twitter, Bluesky inherits and promotes the core concept of the DeSoc (decentralized social) protocol, aiming to build an open and decentralized social network. By connecting individual account profiles with digital content, Bluesky not only promotes the openness and accessibility of social graphs but also provides developers with a flexible platform to build various applications based on social graphs to meet users' diverse needs.

Exploring 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 facilitate data portability.

On Bluesky, users' posts, likes, and mute actions are public, and anyone, even users without an invitation code, can see this content on the network. This design allows users to view posts across the entire network regardless of which server they join, and if they choose to switch servers, they can easily take all their data with them. However, users' mute list subscriptions are private, even though the mute list itself is public. It is worth noting that Bluesky currently does not support setting private profiles.

When users delete posts, the posts are immediately removed from the user interface, and any attached images are also immediately deleted from data storage, but the complete deletion of text content takes longer. Bluesky retains user data through content-addressed archiving, allowing for account data migration across servers, providing developers with a way to export data copies, and is also developing tools to help non-developer users easily access their data.

Bluesky's openness and flexibility make it stand out in the decentralized social space, providing a free and decentralized social experience. This model enhances the anti-censorship and composability of social networks, continuously impacting traditional social platforms. Bluesky not only proves the feasibility and potential of decentralized social but also provides a powerful platform for users and developers seeking open, free, and innovative social experiences.

As a public benefit corporation, 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 offers a user experience similar to traditional social media while ensuring the security and privacy of user data. What sets Bluesky apart is its commitment to open protocols, creating a transparent and free communication environment for developers and users. Additionally, Bluesky meets users' demand for personalized services through new business models such as custom domain name services, while avoiding privacy issues related to reliance on advertising revenue.

At the same time, Bluesky also announced that it will introduce an experimental version of open federation later this month, allowing developers to build their own independent servers, similar to how Mastodon has thousands of different instances. Bluesky users will be able to choose which server to use, and if they change their minds, they can migrate to a different server without losing all their posts, followers, and following lists.

Furthermore, Bluesky will 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 mark posts as "partially false," "misleading," or other categories. Users who trust that organization can then subscribe to their labels. Any labels published by the fact-checking organization will be visible on the posts themselves as users scroll through the app.

Over-Decentralization May Invite Controversy Regarding Privacy and Security, Yet Bluesky Still Secured Significant Funding

On May 7, 2023, criticisms of Bluesky emerged online, focusing on the misleading nature of its self-promotion as an open network. These criticisms centered on three main aspects: the promotion of an open network, the promises of follower and identity retention, and the self-aggrandizement as a protocol ("atproto"). These accusations sparked widespread attention and discussion regarding Bluesky's future development.

Despite various comments within the community, Bluesky experienced a pivotal moment on July 2, 2023, when Elon Musk introduced a limited traffic policy that restricted user activity on Twitter, leading to widespread discussion and user dissatisfaction. In this context, Bluesky, as an emerging social media platform, suddenly became the focus for many users seeking alternatives to Twitter.

Shortly thereafter, on July 5, 2023, Bluesky announced it had successfully raised $8 million in funding, attracting a series of investors aligned with its values, including community-led investment firm Neo, and notable partners like Ali Partovi and Suzanne Xie. Additionally, several industry leaders and innovators, including Joe Beda, co-creator of Kubernetes, Bob Young of Red Hat, and Amjad Masad of Replit, joined the ranks of Bluesky's investors.

The funds from this round of financing will be used to expand the Bluesky team, manage the growing operational and infrastructure costs, and promote the growth of the AT protocol ecosystem and Bluesky applications. Furthermore, Bluesky plans to experiment with different strategies and services to explore ways to provide real value to users and has committed to sharing their learnings and discoveries with the public as they build a sustainable social network. The launch of the first paid service—custom domain name services—demonstrates Bluesky's innovative attempts to seek alternatives to traditional advertising models for profitability.

In response to the skepticism surrounding decentralized social and the associated risks, Bluesky's official stance has been to address these concerns directly, which aptly explains why this project was able to secure significant funding amid market skepticism.

Bluesky's CEO Jay Graber has stated that the advantage of decentralization lies in the ability to simultaneously try multiple transformations, thus not being hindered by changes in a single organization. The way Bluesky is built actually allows anyone to make changes to the product, providing users with more control and customization over their social media experience.

Continuous Criticism and Doubts, Bluesky May Struggle to Fully Realize Its Vision of Decentralized Social Applications

In the face of early criticism, Bluesky chose not to evade but to respond to market and user concerns through a series of practical actions.

First, Bluesky clearly distinguished the relationship between the company and the "atproto" protocol it developed, emphasizing that although Bluesky as a company participated in the protocol's development, "atproto" as an open-source protocol was designed to promote decentralization and openness in the social media space. To eliminate doubts about the protocol's openness, Bluesky not only made the source code of the protocol public but also encouraged and supported third-party developers to create their own applications based on the protocol, effectively demonstrating Bluesky's sincere commitment to an open network.

Second, regarding the issues of user identity and follower retention, Bluesky has ensured that users' data and social connections on the platform are protected through technological innovations. By leveraging the characteristics of decentralization, Bluesky allows users to migrate freely between different service providers without losing their social networks. This user-centric design not only enhances the 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 one hand, it needs to continue building user trust and addressing 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 principles of decentralization and openness may become its greatest competitive advantage. Over time, whether Bluesky can become a significant force in the social media space is worth watching for anyone interested in the trends of social media development.