Jack Dorsey, one of the co-founders of Twitter and probably the longest-serving CEO of the company, stepped down from the role on November 20, 2021. A very popular icon in the tech space, he is a successful internet entrepreneur and tech philanthropist, having co-founded several successful tech companies, including Block and Square. He is a blockchain enthusiast, and he doesn't hide his affection for Web 3 technology. Jack and his team are about to launch a fully decentralized platform that aims to give power back to the user (by reclaiming user data).
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This decentralized platform is named BlueSky. Although it is not yet ready for use, it is currently available for private testing and will be available to the general public once the testing is successful.
All activities in the BlueSky social network are listed on their Twitter page, it was unveiled that decentralization will be the core code of the platform. This will be achieved through the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (ATP), which is the networking technology used to run the app. With the AT protocol, users would have the power to navigate between various social platforms by using the BlueSky app, which is going to be a high-end browser. Thanks to decentralization, users can manage what they see and the amount of data shared with those platforms.
We can see how tech giants like Twitter, Meta, and Google make use of user data through the concept of big data for advertising revenue. The BlueSky project will revolutionize how user data is used by giving power back to the user community through the concept of decentralization.
Is the BlueSky Project a Twitter competitor?
During the last days of October, we have seen and heard the news that Elon Musk, one of the famous billionaires and CEO of several companies (including SpaceX and Tesla), has taken over Twitter after buying the multi-billion dollar social media platform, which is undeniably one of the most popular social media platforms to have existed. Now Elon has about 80% of the stake in Tesla.
There have been so many changes on the platform just a few days after Elon Musk took over the platform, which include the layoffs of several of Twitter's employees, including the CEO (Parag Agrawal) and most of the developers.
Many users have doubts about the survival of the platform after Elon's takeover, and with time, we shall see how this will end.
In my opinion, when the project is finally launched and all the functionalities are working perfectly, it is going to compete with Twitter and other centralized social networks. Also, as Elon just took over Twitter, the future of the platform is uncertain, as we don't know his plans for its future developments. In the future, Twitter could make use of the project, as it is part of the plans of the founders to make Twitter a client of BlueSky.
Jack Dorsey, when asked whether the platform is Twitter, had this to say:
"It’s a competitor to any company trying to own the underlying fundamentals of social media or the data of the people using it," said Jack Dorsey.
Jack Dorsey On Twitter
In comparing BlueSky to decentralized social platforms like Hive and Steemit, I think it is built for a different purpose than what Hive and Steemit are currently doing. It is also important to know that the project is not going to be based on blockchain technology, even though it is a decentralized platform. The Blue Sky project will serve as proof that decentralization is not only built to serve the cryptocurrency space. But it also has a lot of potentials; it is a way to take power from the private entities making use of our data.
Consulted sources include www.geekmetaverse.com, atproto.com, cover picture credit to thenewscrypto.com
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