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As TikTok prepares to go dark, Mark Zuckerberg relaxes content restrictions on Meta apps, and Elon Musk continues to toy with Algorithm X to suit his personal preferences, there’s a lot of change in the air in the social media world.
Thankfully, despite the fickle nature of most app users, Bluesky has managed to break through and become a truly promising alternative. Thanks to the basic nature of its open protocol, anyone can build their own apps that extend beyond the Bluesky social graph.
For example, a developer named Sebastian Vogelsang is building an app that will be a new version of Instagram on top of Bluesky’s AT Protocol. Since Bluesky uses the social graph, posts have been added Flashing will also appear in the main Bluesky client and vice versa – photos posted in Bluesky will appear in Flashes. The app simply filters text-based posts and displays only those with photos or videos. Through the app, users can share photo slideshows of up to four images or one-minute videos.
Vogelsang says Flashes isn’t meant to be a complete takedown of Instagram and won’t get many of Instagram’s features. This makes sense because the app is just a polish of the Bluesky app. Many people have lamented that they long for the days when Instagram was simple, not full of AI-generated content or weird recommendations. Flashes can potentially help fill this gap.
Bluesky got a big boost from Elon Musk’s acquisition of Xi and then Twitter, though its growth has plateaued. has slowed down in recent months. Bluesky is estimated to have around 27 million active users. It’s nowhere near the size of apps like Instagram and TikTok, and it’s still quite a bit smaller than the X. It’s incredibly difficult for any social network to reach critical mass, and X only sees his influence grow as Musk begins to serve as President-elect Trump’s right-hand man.
But Bluesky has a promising future if it can continue to grow at a moderate pace. Company a 15 million dollars of investment is returned It plans to launch paid subscriptions in October so the company doesn’t rely on advertising or collecting user data. These days, most major social networks have closed their APIs and don’t allow third-party clients because they make ad serving and targeting difficult, and the data itself is used to train artificial intelligence.
Vogelsang said TechCrunch that Flashes should be launched in the coming weeks. Anyone who wants to check can watch Burns the account on Bluesky for updates.
