There’s a lot of change in the world of social media as TikTok prepares to go dark, Mark Zuckerberg loosens content restrictions on Meta apps, and Elon Musk continues to tinker with Algorithm X to suit his personal preferences.
Fortunately, despite the fickle nature of most of the app’s users, Bluesky seems to have managed to break through and become a really promising alternative. And thanks to the underlying open nature of its protocol, anyone can build their own applications that rely on Bluesky’s social graph.
For example, a developer named Sebastian Vogelsang is building an app that will essentially be a new version of Instagram on top of Bluesky’s AT protocol. Since it uses the Bluesky social graph, posts have been added Flashes will also appear on the main Bluesky client, and vice versa—photos uploaded to Bluesky will appear on Flashes. The app only filters text-based posts and displays only those with photos or videos. Through the app, users can share photo slideshows with up to four images or one-minute videos.
Vogelsang says Flashes isn’t meant to be a complete rip-off of Instagram and won’t have many of the features Instagram has. This makes sense as the app is just a skin of the Bluesky app. Many people lament that they long for the days when Instagram was simple, without AI-generated content or strange recommendations. Flashes could potentially help fill that hole.
Bluesky got a big boost from Elon Musk’s acquisition of X, then Twitter, although its growth slowed down in recent months. Bluesky is estimated to have approximately 27 million active users. That’s nowhere near the size of apps like Instagram and TikTok, and it’s still a lot smaller than X. Reaching critical mass for any social network is incredibly difficult, and X is only seeing its influence grow as Musk begins to serve as the president-elect’s right-hand man. Trump.
But Bluesky has a promising future if it can continue to grow at a moderate pace. The company raised a Return on investment of 15 million dollars in October with plans to launch paid subscriptions so the company doesn’t rely on advertising or collecting user data. Most of the big social networks these days have turned on their APIs and don’t allow third-party clients because they make it harder to show and target advertising, and the data itself is used to train the AI.
Vogelsang said TechCrunch which Flashes should launch in the coming weeks. Anyone who wants to check it out can follow along The account is flashing on Bluesky for updates.