Social media shapes much of the online world.

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram connect billions of people and influence everything from politics to pop culture. However, many people also have concerns about these networks, like privacy issues or misinformation spreading.

A new app called Bluesky aims to reimagine social media for the better. The app focuses on user control, transparency, and openness.

Bluesky offers an intriguing vision for the future of social platforms. But what exactly is this new app, and could it live up to its lofty goals?

The Origins of Bluesky

In 2019, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey announced plans to fund Bluesky. He pitched it as an open and decentralized standard for social media. Dorsey envisioned the project as a way to address some of the common issues that crop up with big online platforms.

“Twitter is funding a small independent team to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media,” Dorsey tweeted at the time. “The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.”

So in essence, Dorsey wanted to create an open protocol that could support a variety of social platforms and experiences. Twitter itself could even be built on top of this standard one day.

The name Bluesky evokes broad possibilities – an open sky full of potential. It captures the project’s ambitions to pioneer an optimistic path for social media going forward.

How Bluesky Aims to Be Different

So how exactly does Bluesky plan to create a new model for social networks? The app focuses on three key pillars:

User Control

On many existing platforms, companies control most of the experience. But Bluesky wants to put personal agency first instead.

For example, users could decide which algorithms recommend content to them or customize privacy settings more granularly.

The protocol itself would not depend on having one central entity make all the decisions.

Open & Transparent Infrastructure

Today’s social media networks rely on proprietary systems behind the scenes. But Bluesky intends to develop its technical infrastructure out in the open for people to inspect.

An open infrastructure could allow for more accountability and community auditing. Apps built on Bluesky would also be interoperable, unlike the walled gardens we see today.

Portable Social Graphs

Your list of followers essentially represents your social graph on a platform. However, usually you can’t take that social graph with you if you leave a service. Bluesky wants to enable portable social graphs that users fully own and control. If you try a new app, you could bring your existing social connections with you.

In a Bluesky future, there would still be a range of different social apps with various features or focuses. But they could share common protocols and frameworks defined by the open standard. Ideally, this approach empowers users more and addresses common issues in the industry.

How Bluesky Works Technically

Creating an open and decentralized infrastructure for social interactions online is an ambitious vision that raises many technical questions. So how might the Bluesky protocol work under the hood?

The project focuses heavily on data portability. In May 2022, the team outlined their plans to build on the existing Data Transfer Project. That framework already enables porting contacts or messages between platforms using common APIs.

Bluesky wants to extend those concepts more deeply into the social graph layer. For example, users could store their profile information in one place and seamlessly sync it between compatible apps. Custom clients could also access social data through APIs designed for interoperability.

Cryptography plays a central role as well. By relying on public-private key pairs, profiles on the network can verify their authenticity without centralized authority. Bluesky also plans to explore reputation systems and content moderation structures that align with its goals of user control.

Overall, it’s an ambitious technical mission. The team still has lots of work ahead to hammer out details and turn high-level ideas into functioning protocols. But the seeds are planted for a potentially transformative open and connected social ecosystem.

Who’s Behind Bluesky?

For an initiative aiming to decentralize social media, Bluesky has a notably centralized start relying heavily on Twitter and Jack Dorsey. Some key players include:

Jack Dorsey: The former Twitter CEO serves as a general manager guiding Bluesky. He articulated the original vision and is funding its initial development. Dorsey brings passion for social media and technical chops from founding two major networks.

Jay Graber: As head of Bluesky, Graber leads its software engineering work. She previously created Happening, an events app in the early 2000s. Her background spans design, product, and protocol development roles, including at GitHub.

Twitter: Bluesky resides inside Twitter as an independent team for now. Twitter contributes funding and the project uses some of its infrastructure temporarily. The future relationship once Bluesky matures remains to be clarified.

This small team has already done foundational work defining goals and early protocol concepts. They publish regular updates on the Bluesky blog as things progress. But eventually for it to succeed at scale, Bluesky will need extended community adoption beyond Twitter.

Example Use Cases on Bluesky

Reimagining social infrastructure sounds appealing, but what would Bluesky actually enable people to do? Some possibilities that demonstrate its goals:

• Switching social apps easily: Cara gets annoyed by the latest update to her current social platform. She downloads a new app built on Bluesky and instantly imports all her friends and past profile info there seamlessly.
• Combating misinformation campaigns: News of a dangerous new virus emerges on social media, but key facts remain murky. Susan uses a Bluesky-powered misinformation tracking tool to pinpoint where false claims originated and how they spread across apps.
• Enhancing accessibility: Jake is visually impaired. He chooses a Bluesky-compatible client with features tailored for screen reader software, allowing him to access social media just as conveniently as others.
• Preserving digital history: As older platforms decline, Mark worries about losing touch with online communities he engaged with for years. Bluesky’s data portability helps him back up those social connections and memories before they disappear.

These scenarios illustrate how an open social ecosystem could improve user control, transparency, and choice.

People may not notice or care about the technical foundations enabling those experiences. But the underlying protocols influence what’s possible.

Challenges and Uncertainties

Creating a new open protocol system for social networks sounds great in theory. But implementations often prove trickier than high-level visions. Bluesky faces plenty of challenges and open questions, like:

• Achieving adoption: For Bluesky to have meaningful impact, apps actually need to use the standard. With entrenched giants like Facebook, that could prove difficult unless early adopters find creative ways to attract users.
• Moderating content: Even with user control as a goal, Bluesky will need to consider how to handle illegal or dangerous misuse. Issues around censorship resistance and decentralized moderation models abound.
• Evolving business models: Bluesky aims to enable many kinds of social platforms, but most consumer apps rely on advertising or user data today. Reconciling new business models that align with its principles poses tricky questions.
• Governance structures: Right now Bluesky decisions center around Twitter and Jack Dorsey’s influence. But for it to become truly decentralized, the project would need inclusive community governance that retains coherence.

Only time will tell how Bluesky navigates challenges like these. Perhaps its biggest impact emerges indirectly by demonstrating concepts that legacy players then adopt themselves. With enough early traction, Bluesky manages to catalyze an entirely new wave of social media.

The Road Ahead

Reimagining social media comes with no shortage of complexities. Choices today around data formats or content filters could have far-reaching implications down the line if widely adopted. By tackling these systemic issues, Bluesky offers an opportunity to realign the status quo toward user benefit.

But fundamentally, social media remains about enabling connections. As Bluesky episodes play out, it matters less whether Twitter itself succeeds based on the standard. Rather, progress means seeing new platforms emerge that make online interactions more empowering.

If Bluesky manages to spur positive social change through its technical blueprint, it will achieve its goal. With the internet continuously evolving, deciding optimal protocols for generatively capturing the next decade of social data represents a key frontier. Addressing that epochal challenge calls for bold ideas – exactly what the Bluesky initiative aims to provide as it gradually turns vision into reality one step at a time.