Jack Dorsey, Ex-Twitter CEO, launches Twitter rival Bluesky

To end all the speculation about rejoining Twitter as CEO, Jack Dorsey has now launched a Twitter alternative. Dorsey, who stepped down from him as Twitter CEO in November 2021, was rumoured to return to Twitter following his growing camaraderie with new Twitter boss Elon Musk on the social media platform. However, it seems that they are better off as competitors than allies. Dorsey's Bluesky, which has retained the blue colour of Twitter, is now available on the Apple App Store in the testing phase.

According to TechCrunch, Bluesky, which is the upcoming microblogging platform, is available as an invite-only beta on the App Store. The app will likely be inching towards a public release. Bluesky shared a blog post in October of last year detailing the protocol that powers the app.

Bluesky was designed as a new decentralized social networking protocol. "Bluesky was created to build a social protocol. In the spring, we released "ADX," the very first iteration of the protocol. Over the summer, we improved and simplified ADX's design, and today we're sharing a preview of what's to come," the blog reads.

A protocol is basically a set of rules or standards that govern how devices or software communicate with each other. Here, the protocol would define how the social media platforms using Bluesky would interact with each other.

"ADX" is the first iteration of the protocol that Bluesky released in the spring. This initial build was likely more complex and less refined than the team expected. Therefore, through the summer, they worked to simplify and improve the design of ADX.

As per the app intelligence firm data.ai, the Bluesky app was unveiled on February 17 and has seen more than 2,000 installs in the testing phase. It is also quite similar to Twitter in terms of the user interface. As Twitter asks, "What's happening?" Bluesky asks, "What's up?"

Just like Twitter, Bluesky users can share, block, and mute accounts. However, users do not yet have the option to add people to the list. Other than that, users are given "who to follow" suggestions. "Another tab lets you check on your Notifications, including likes, reposts, follows and replies, also much like Twitter. There are no DMs," as per the report.