Graber is “optimistic about human potential, even though I’m realistic about human nature.” When Bluesky launched last year, it filled a gap that was desperately needed by people who were looking for alternatives to X, as it seemed like the ship formerly known as Twitter was possibly sinking. (Against all odds, it hasn’t yet.)
Bluesky wasn’t as confusing as Mastodon and wasn’t owned by Meta like Threads. Bluesky looks and feels much like Old Twitter.
There was only one snag: It was available as a beta launch, only with an invite code, which was initially so hard to obtain that even Joe Biden couldn’t get one. Starting Tuesday, Bluesky is finally out of “beta” and will be open to anyone — no codes needed.
Like Mastodon and Threads, Bluesky is an experiment in a new, “decentralized” way of running a social app, where users can create their own communities and moderation rules. (Bluesky also has its own moderation team.)
Jack Dorsey was involved in creating Bluesky while he was still at Twitter and now sits on its board. It’s organized as a public benefit corporation.
Ultimately, it may not be a winner-takes-all competition between these X alternatives; the new approach to social may be to exist happily in smaller pockets without needing massive scale to survive. (Although Meta certainly would love to win the battle with Threads.)
More here - https://www.businessinsider.nl/bluesky-is-finally-open-to-everyone-but-will-anyone-come-we-ask-its-ceo/
Why is everything called blue sky all of a sudden? I see blue sky everywhere - blue sky plumbing, blue sky builders, blue sky bar, blue sky physical therapy, blue sky cbd… even Mt Evans was renamed to Mt Blue Sky.
Software devs for a long time would discuss “green field” development, which is a metaphor from constructing a building in an empty field: you start from nothing, and build all new. Most software devs prefer to write new code rather than try to learn the quirks and nuances of a large, already-existing pile of code, so “green field” is considered both desirable and often practically unattainable.
“Blue sky” is a similar concept but loftier. It isn’t just that you have an empty field waiting for you, you’ve got the infitie expanse of the clear blue sky: endless possibilities, unlimited creativity, etc. “Blue sky development” as a metaphor I think comes from designers, product managers, and other software-dev adjacent fields. It means thinking of ideas that are out of the box and unconstrained by historical limits.
That’s why everything is named that: execs and marketers love that kind of hollow promise. That anything is possible even though actually they’re almost always just clones of existing things whose greatest innovation is to loudly proclaim how new and innovative you are.
Are you sure it’s not just Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Once you’re primed to notice a particular thing you’ll notice it more often, even if it was around equally much beforehand.