Twitter, the microblogging platform, was peaceful, before it became toxic.
It was a place where people shared 140 characters, before the number doubled. It was the platform of choice by many businesses and influential individuals, before Elon Musk acquired it for a staggering $44 billion.
Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, was twice its CEO.
With Musk's big entrance, Dorsey who has relieved himself from the daily operations of the company he founded, is making himself increasingly distant from Twitter.
And according to report, Dorsey starts beta testing a new social media application, called the 'Bluesky'.
"The word 'Bluesky' evokes a wide-open space of possibility. It was the original name for this project before it took shape, and continues to be the name of our company," the release stated. "We're calling the application we're building Bluesky because it will be a portal to the world of possibility on top of the AT Protocol."
"The next step is to start testing the protocol. Distributed protocol development is a tricky process," the company shared in a news release. "It requires coordination from many parties once a network is deployed, so we're going to start in private beta to iron out issues.
"As we beta test, we'll continue to iterate on the protocol specs and share details about how it works. When it's ready, we'll move to the open beta," it added, sharing a link to sign up for the beta test's waitlist.
The release explained that Bluesky uses an Authenticated Transfer Protocol (AT Protocol), which is a federated social network run by multiple websites instead of just a single site.
What this means, the social platform uses a decentralized social network protocol, which is the underlying code behind the app.
According to its web page, the protocol is designed to be the foundation for social networking, which gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build, and users a choice in their experience.
According to Dorsey, he wants Bluesky to be "a competitor to any company trying to own the underlying fundamentals for social media or the data of the people using it."
It's worth noting that Bluesky was announced a few days before Musk brought a kitchen sink with him to Twitter's headquarter, and was originally founded by Twitter itself in 2019.
At that time, Bluesky was meant to be a decentralized concept for the social media giant.
But since Dorsey quit as Twitter CEO in November 2021, and later stepped down from Twitter's board in May 2022, the project was partially abandoned.
This time, with him seeing only a little part of him remains on Twitter, Dorsey is making Bluesky a competitor to Twitter, as it is a competitor to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others.
But unlike others, the decentralized nature of Bluesky makes it free from governmental influence.
Instead, Dorsey, who is himself a fan of cryptocurrency and blockchain, wants Bluesky to be controlled by users rather than commercialized by a corporation.
Dorsey wants it to revolutionize the personal data economy.
And since users are in control, Bluesky is planned to allow user account data to be moved from platform to platform. Bluesky users should also be able to use their account to log in to any social media account that adopts the same code.
So here, Bluesky users who own an account can access all of their favorite social media.
It’s a competitor to any company trying to own the underlying fundamentals for social media or the data of the people using it
— jack (@jack) October 18, 2022
Back in 2021, Dorsey said that blockchain was the only way decentralized social networks could implement “open and durable hosting, governance, and even monetization".
But still, decentralization doesn't mean that it's entirely on blockchain.
"I'm confident in our decision to not put social media content on a blockchain," tweeted Bluesky CEO Jay Graber. "It's blockchain optional and blockchain agnostic. I personally wouldn't build a system that backs up your posts on-chain."
The team behind the project described the app as a “protocol for large-scale distributed social applications that will allow for account portability, algorithmic choice, interoperability and performance".
The AT Protocol is a new federated social network. It integrates ideas from the latest decentralized technologies into a simple, fast, and open network.https://t.co/ri1wR4AX3e
— bluesky (@bluesky) October 18, 2022
Dorsey is able to make Bluesky his own project, because it was organized by Twitter as a non-profit initiative, before it entered the research phase.
So here, Bluesky is essentially owned by the development team itself, without any controlling stake held by Twitter.
Dorsey wanted the project to be independent from Twitter because at the time, he believed it was necessary to the success of the project.
With Tesla boss Elon Musk becoming the new owner of Twitter, taking over the company that was founded back in 2006, it seems like Dorsey is not leaving his legacy without taking a souvenir.
It's worth mentioning that Musk offered Dorsey the CEO position at Twitter, replacing Parag Agrawal that Musk fired.
Dorsey however, showed no interest in returning.
What this means, Dorsey is ready to move on, leaving the company he founded by owning just 2% of it.
Read: Billionaire Elon Musk Becomes The Single Largest Shareholder Of Twitter