You will want to check this out. I was invited to be one of the first 20k users on Blue Sky Social, the new Twitter competitor, and have had the chance to test it out during its beta mode.
Though it’s still an invite-only walled garden with just 50k users it’s easy to see even at this stage that it’s going to have a huge impact when it finally goes public.
It looks like Twitter, it acts like Twitter, it just doesn’t have that toxic taste and the unpleasant reek of White Nationalism and Anti-Semitism, or indeed the Putin cheerleading.
Blue Sky was actually developed within Twitter by that company’s founder Jack Dorsey as the future of social media, a federated system of independent islands in the turbulent ocean of the internet which could never be bought by any billionaire.
When Elon Musk took over Twitter, Dorsey took Blue Sky Social with him when he exited. Dorsey is now an investor but the company is run by CEO Jay Graber who’s done remarkable work with a small team laying the tracks as the engine rolls.
There are plenty of big ideas under the deceptively Twitterish paint job. Not the least that users will own their profile and content and be able to move it to any other social media network.
The team is currently building strong moderation to eliminate the kind of abuse that has become part of the scenery on Twitter and it won’t launch publicly till that’s ready.
I love it there. The conversations are great and I’ve made lots of new friends. As you would expect, the early user base is very tech heavy, but that’s changing fast. More writers, journalists, artists and musicians have signed up over the last few days.
And perhaps the biggest seal of approval is how many heavy hitters have now made it their home: Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, James Gunn, Rian Johnson, Neil Gaiman and more…
When it does finally launch I can see Blue Sky Social being the key social media app for many users. I’ll post more here when a public launch is imminent.