The social network has announced an updated version of its app that lets you offer feedback about its algorithmic feed so you can better customize it.
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Bluesky has launched a new product roadmap for the coming months. The decentralized social network said on Tuesday that it is planning to introduce direct messages, support for videos, improved custom feeds, and new moderation controls.
In a blog post, the company said it is developing a direct messaging (DM) service that will be integrated into the Bluesky app, off the decentralized AT Protocol — the protocol that Bluesky uses — initially, and would later develop an on-protocol DM. Bluesky said that this initial version will facilitate one-on-one chat and have controls for users to limit who can DM them.
The company says it is also working on improving its custom feeds, which lets users curate their feeds. You can use third-party tools to improve what custom feeds can do, but Bluesky says it is now working on features like in-app feed creation, better feed discovery, a new trending feeds view, the ability to submit posts to feeds, curate the submissions and manually moderate them; and a way arrange feeds on the home screen better.
Bluesky said it is also working on anti-harassment tools, though it didn’t detail what these tools might do.
Additionally, the social network is looking into extending support for videos on the platform as well as an “OAuth” login mechanism that would allow users to “Log in with Bluesky” to different services related to the social network. Currently, users need to use a separate password to log-in to third-party apps and remember it.
News that Jack Dorsey is out at Bluesky caused a stir this weekend. After all, Dorsey is a former Twitter co-founder and CEO, so his investment of time into the rival social network carried weight. The decentralized social networking service said that it is looking for a new board member.
But while we had to talk about Dorsey’s latest on Equity today, it was far from the only topic we got to chat about. Past a busy earnings week ahead of us, we also dug into the latest employment news concerning China’s tech giants. Like many large U.S. tech shops, they are shedding staff. Tech shops around the world are showing that they can do more with less.
Sticking to China, the country is set to deliver another IPO, this time in the United States. Momenta could raise up to $300 million in its debut, meaning that its upcoming listing is is going to carry real weight. (More on Momenta here.)
And to close out we took a look at new capital that the U.S. government is putting into digital twins, and why alt-clouds are making real progress but could run into growth speedbumps in time. Equity is back on Wednesday — we’ll chat with you then!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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It sounds like Bluesky’s most prominent backer is no longer on its board.
On Saturday, Jack Dorsey posted on X about grants for open protocols from his philanthropic Start Small initiative. This prompted someone to ask Dorsey if he was still on the Bluesky board, and he responded with a terse “no.” Dorsey did not answer any of the follow-up posts asking him to explain his departure.
It’s not clear when Dorsey left the board; as of Sunday morning, Bluesky’s corporate FAQ still identifies him as a board member. We’ve reached out to the company for confirmation.
Dorsey first announced Bluesky in 2019, back when he was still CEO of Twitter. He wrote that Twitter (now X) was “funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media.”
Since then, Bluesky has become an independent public benefit corporation, led by CEO Jay Graber, with VC backing, and it opened to the general public in February.
Dorsey appears to have deleted his Bluesky account at some point last year, though his departure was only acknowledged at the time by a smattering of social media posts. (He also deleted his Instagram account.) Despite this, he remained the biggest name associated with the project.
Back on X, Dorsey has had a pretty active weekend. In addition to dropping corporate news, he’s also weighed in on the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, unfollowed nearly every other account, and posted, “don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights. defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you’re on one)”
Social networks Bluesky and Mastodon may soon be accessible from within a single app — at least, that’s what Bluesky hopes. The new decentralized social network, originally incubated inside Jack Dorsey-run Twitter, is backing a project that would connect — or “bridge” — Mastodon requests into Bluesky requests so that consumer apps, like Ivory, would be compatible with Bluesky, too.
The project, dubbed SkyBridge, was among the recipients of a small distribution of $4,800 in grant funding from Bluesky, distributed across projects. SkyBridge was the second-largest recipient in this current cohort, with $800 of the total.
Bluesky had announced last month that it would use some portion of its funds to fuel efforts in the developer ecosystem via the AT Protocol Grant program. From a financial standpoint, the program is fairly insignificant, as it’s only doling out $10,000 in grants, with $4,800 already distributed. That’s not enough to found a new company in this space, but it represents a way to encourage developers who may have wanted to dig into the new AT Protocol anyway. It also serves as an early signal of the kind of development work Bluesky supports — something that could help drive adoption among developers who have been previously (and repeatedly) burned by Twitter and its changing priorities.
Other program recipients are doing valuable work as well.
For example, Blacksky Algorithms is building a suite of services to provide custom moderation services for Bluesky’s Black users. Others are building Bluesky consumer apps, developer tools, analytics resources and more.
But SkyBridge is particularly interesting because it could potentially open up the small startup to a wider audience.
Unlike Mastodon and other decentralized apps powered by the older ActivityPub protocol, Bluesky is developing a new, decentralized social networking protocol. Unfortunately, for end users who have begun exploring the open-source social networks broadly known as the “fediverse,” Bluesky’s decision to build on a different protocol means users have to switch apps to access Bluesky’s network. They can’t use their preferred Mastodon app to browse Bluesky content, that is.
If successful, SkyBridge could change that as it would be able to translate Mastodon API calls to Bluesky API calls. The bridge is currently being tested on Ivory on iOS and Mac; it’s the Mastodon app from the company that previously developed a popular third-party Twitter app, called Tweetbot. Notes SkyBridge’s developer @videah.net on Bluesky, the project is currently undergoing a significant rewrite from Dart to Rust, which is why its GitHub repo hasn’t seen much activity lately.
Still, he thinks the work is promising.
“It’s already proving to be much more stable, hoping to show it off soon,” videah posted on Bluesky when sharing the news of the grant.
Today, Bluesky has nearly 5.6 million users, while the wider ActivityPub-backed fediverse has over 10 million users. Instagram Threads (which is integrating with ActivityPub) now has more than 150 million monthly active users, Meta announced this week during earnings.
The move to bridge Bluesky and Mastodon has been the subject of some debate as of late. People have disagreed about how bridging should be done, or whether a bridge should be built at all. Another software developer, Ryan Barrett was the recipient of some backlash on GitHub when building another bridge called Bridgy Fed, which would be opt-out by default — meaning Mastodon posts would show up on Bluesky even if the post’s author hadn’t opted into this. He readjusted his plans to build a discoverable opt-in instead, which would allow users to request to follow accounts on the different networks.
With its backing of SkyBridge, Bluesky is signaling a desire to blur the lines between Mastodon and Bluesky.
Eventually, people may not need to think about what protocol an app runs on, just like no one thinks about their email client using SMTP, POP3 or IMAP. And in an ideal outcome, people could connect to friends on any social network, regardless of its underpinning, and see their friends’ replies in return, too.
Social networking platform Bluesky lifted its ban on sign-ups for heads of state over the weekend. This means various office holders can join the platform. Bluesky’s move comes ahead of major general elections in countries like the U.S. and India scheduled to be held this year.
Last year, during Bluesky’s invite-only period, the company stated that it didn’t allow heads of state to sign up and asked users to contact the startup before inviting prominent figures.
“We appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm in sending invitations, but our current policy is that we cannot accommodate heads of state to join us in our beta yet. This applies to recent/prominent heads of state as well,” the company had said at that time.
Notably, in February, the company opened up the platform for anyone to sign up for the service after staying in an invite-only mode for almost a year.
Bluesky faced moderation challenges early in its lifespan and battled issues like allowing racial slurs in handles. Separately, users have continuously pushed the platform to clamp down on hate speech.
Last December, Bluesky added moderation lists along with automated moderation tools. Last month, it announced the Ozone tool, which allows users to build their own moderation and labeling services.
With the social network now allowing political heads to join the platform, there could be new types of moderation issues that it hasn’t faced yet. And it will need to be prepared for different possibilities.
Bluesky’s rival Threads has distanced itself from actively recommending political content. However, Bluesky users don’t have to rely on a central algorithm to look at different kinds of political content, as they can subscribe to different feeds.
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