NOTE: This is a follow-up to a previous article that published on April 17: Bluesky - a Twitter Clone that is still available at: https://eogn.com/page-18080/13170409.
In 2019, Jack Dorsey announced a project to “create an open and decentralized standard for social media.” Bluesky has spent the past several years developing the underlying protocol. After an iOS app in February, Bluesky for Android is now available as an invite-only beta.
The foundation of Bluesky is the Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol. Meant to support “large-scale distributed social applications,” tentpoles include account portability, algorithmic choice, interoperation, and performance. You can find the protocol overview here.
The app, which is meant to be a reference client, is quite straightforward with four tabs:
- Home: “Following” is the default feed with “What’s hot” helpful when starting out
- Search
- Notifications
- Account
A navigation drawer can be opened by tapping your profile picture in the top-left corner. This lets you access settings, switch themes (similar to the Twitter UI), and send feedback. You’ll also see how many invite codes you have. Those are issued after “you’ve been on Bluesky for a little longer.”
It launched first on iOS in late February and Bluesky for Android is now available (via The Verge). The latter experience is pretty basic with performance just okay for an initial release.
Bluesky is on the Play Store today and still invite-only. New sign-ups are able to join with a code from an existing user or the waitlist here.
You can read more in an article by Abner Li in the 9to5google.com web site at: https://9to5google.com/2023/04/19/bluesky-android-app/