Everyone seems to be talking about Lemon8, too, and we’ve covered that ByteDance-owned app here.

So Twitter’s a mess, which is news to no one (if even the beloved residents of Sesame Street are against you, what’s the point?). And over the past several months, the names of a number of competitors have been floating around in the conversation of who could replace it. With Bluesky, it sounds like we might be getting closer to knowing.

Founded by Jack Dorsey—formerly the CEO of Twitter—Bluesky is a decentralized app pretty similar in nature to the blue bird. In fact, it was once a project of Twitter, which had previously invested $13 million to get it moving. Bluesky effectively separated from Twitter in October and is still funded by Dorsey.

“The goal of the AT Protocol is to allow modern social media to work more like the early days of the web, when anyone could put up a blog or use RSS to subscribe to several blogs,” says Bluesky’s website. “We believe this will unlock a new era of experimentation and innovation in social media. Researchers and communities will have the ability to jump in to help solve the problems social networks currently face, and developers will be able to experiment with many new forms of interaction.”

Apparently, the app is a whole lot of fun. “There’s a fizzy, infectious f***-around energy, like everyone chugged a Red Bull on a Friday afternoon and the boss is out of town,” wrote Kate Knibbs on Wired. “Users are playfully creating their own lingo; they call posts ‘skeets.’ (Threaded posts are ‘ropes.’) The vibe reminds me of the weeks when Clubhouse was invite-only and looked like the next big thing, before it got overrun by hustle culture gurus and crypto entrepreneurs.”

Only time will tell if the fun will last, but new Twitter alternatives coming to the table are certainly not a bad thing—they make life online more interesting and keep our favorite apps on the hook for improving to the benefit of their users.

Bluesky is currently available on an invite-only basis—and a number of high-profile public figures are already using it—but people interested in scoring an invite can sign up on Bluesky’s website for the waitlist for a beta invitation.

(Image via Bluesky)

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