A brand new exclusive social media platform has been launched, which not only looks almost identical to Twitter, but is also trying to replace it. Known as BlueSky, the platform has been created by Twitter's former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey.
It was first put on Apple Store in February before being placed on Google Play Store in April, and is free to download. However, the social network is still in its private beta stage, and the only way to access the app for now is via invite before it is made publicly available.
To get an invite, users just need to visit the BlueSky website and provide their email address. Already millions of people have expressed interest in signing up to it.
As it stands, there is a waiting list of 1.2 million people, according to its CEO, Jay Graber. Although the social network technically doesn’t have a web app just yet, if you have been invited and are logged in you'll be able to check it out properly via staging.bsky.app.
For those who head to that web link without an invite, they'll be met with a page that says: "BlueSky. See what's next", followed by options to 'create a new account' or to 'sign in'. A statement also reads: "BlueSky will launch soon. Join the waitlist to try the beta before it's publicly available."
Some lucky few who have been able to enter the beta and test out the app for themselves have shared screenshots - which look remarkably similar to Twitter. Screengrabs of users' profiles show a variety of features one would expect to see, such as a profile picture, name of the profile, the number of followers, following and posts.
And just like Twitter, users can create posts with 256 characters, 'like' and repost content, as well as leave a comment. But the main thing that makes it different from Twitter is how it is operated.
Unlike Twitter, BlueSky is what's called a decentralised social app, which means it runs off multiple servers instead of just one. BlueSky also does not yet have direct messaging or other advanced tools, like adding accounts to lists.
The creation of BlueSky comes as Elon Musk became CEO of Twitter on October 27, 2022, after acquiring the social media company for $44 billion. While former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey funded BlueSky, he is not directly involved in the day-to-day developing of the social media platform. Its CEO is Jay Graber, who used to work as a software engineer for cryptocurrency Zcash.
