Brian Merchant: Bluesky evokes nostalgia for the days when social media was fun. But is that enough?
The buzziest startup in Silicon Valley in May of 2023 is not an AI outfit or a metaverse play. It's a glitchy copy of Twitter, circa 2013. I spent the last week on the surging social media upstart Bluesky trying to find out why, and discovered something alarming: We've entered social media's reboot phase.
Bluesky looks and feels just like Twitter did 10 years ago, and there's a reason for that: It was born in the belly of the bird app. Funded as an in-house initiative by former Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, Bluesky began in 2019 as an effort to build a protocol for a decentralized social network — basically, a way to make social media work more like email, where different clients such as Gmail and Outlook can talk to each other.
When Elon Musk took over, he cut it off from Twitter, and now, ironically, Bluesky may become Twitter's most viable direct competitor. Many have never Musk has . In March, when Bluesky launched in invite-only beta, few had even heard of it. Last week, when thousands of people got those invitations, suddenly, in online and techie circles, at least, AI was on the sidelines, and it was all anyone was talking about.
