Jack Dorsey's Bluesky Social app: What we know so far

Investment Analysis Clubs Destiny Solutions Corporation
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Alternate Theory: What if Jack Dorsey played everybody in that Twitter deal? Jack didn’t miss a beat here:

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s new Bluesky Social app is now accepting users for beta testing, and is set to launch “soon”.

The highly anticipated social media project has been described as a rival to Twitter (TWTR) and is set to challenge existing social media platforms like Facebook (META), Instagram and Snapchat (SNAP).

On Tuesday, Bluesky announced the roadmap of its decentralised social network protocol, which will be the underlying code behind the app.

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Thanks for posting this! I get the feeling that Jack is driven by “the greater good”. The private communication in a court filing is really interesting, and gives a glimpse into how and why this came to be.

Took me a while, but well worth a read so have extracted and reproduced the initial conversation. Hope you’ll enjoy it. Here goes.
(emphasis and [] is mine)

It started with a public tweet from Elon Musk:

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Jack wrote/responded to Elon in private, the very same day.

Jack Dorsey
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267?s=20

Jack Dorsey
Yes, a new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. This is why I left.

Elon
Ok

Elon
What should it look like?

Jack Dorsey
I believe it must be an open source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn’t own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can’t have an advertising model. Otherwise you have surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control. If it has a centralized entity behind it, it will be attacked. This isn’t complicated work, it just has to be done right so it’s resilient to what has happened to twitter.

Elon
Super interesting idea

Jack Dorsey
I’m off the twitter board mid May and then completely out of company. I intend to do this work and fix our mistakes. Twitter started as a protocol. I[t] should have never been a company. That was the original sin.

Elon
I’d like to help if I am able to

Jack Dorsey
I wanted to talk with you about it after I was all clear, because you care so much, get it’s importance, and could def help in immeasurable ways. Back when we had the activist come in, I tried my hardest to get you on our board, and our board said no. That’s about the time I decided I needed to work to leave, as hard as it was for me.

Elon
Do you have a moment to talk?

Jack Dorsey
Bout to head out to dinner but can for a minute

Jack Dorsey
I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk, which I thought was completely stupid and backwards, but I only had one vote, and 3% of company, and no dual class shares. Hard setup. We can discuss more.

Elon
Lets definitely discuss more

Elon
I think it’s worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that’s decentralized

Jack Dorsey
It’s likely the best option. I just have doubts. But open

I find it interesting how things evolve into Elon ending up buying Twitter and the Bluesky Social app indeed being built on top of a new open source protocol.

// Raylight

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Ray, that’s an outstanding post. Best on the board about this $TWTR mess. When you read the tweets with private emails you get to see what Billionaires are like behind the scene. They are not superior beings, that’s for sure.

I understand one thing Jack is doing here: he is not building on a blockchain - at least not yet. When he investigates some of the new protocols just released from Ethereum and Cardano, he might change this tune. Both of these projects are making great strides in scaling up, speed and cost of transactions.

I am trying to understand his thinking for building this as a decentralized app with no blockchain backing it. Being decentralized means he won’t be setting up rooms with expensive dedicated servers. No rent, no leasing, no maintenance.

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Thanks!

I’m glad you brought Bluesky to my attention. It’s really interesting! This could even be a game changer if it gains traction.

As I see it, the key understanding is that the main thing is the protocol. That’s the decentralized part. You could think of the Bluesky Social App as “search engine” and interface on top of it. You could have any number of apps, sites and services - all being different interfaces to the underlying data.

So there’s no need to use a blockchain. It’s a federated solution - similar to other protocols like XMPP, SIP, email, and so on. By being an interoperable standard it allows anyone to set up a server, just like the web. And just like browsers and e.g. Google Search are front ends to whatever is out there, a “Twitter” or a “Bluesky Social” would be a front end to whatever “tweets” and users are out there:

I recommend checking out the whole Twitter-thread if you haven’t. It’s quite telling:

Users get a choice of provider, and individuals and businesses can self-host if they want.

…just like email and websites. This would be difficult to achieve with something built on a blockchain.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves. Like, where does this leave Elon Musk and Twitter? I get the feeling that Jack and Musk are aligned, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s collaboration going on. We just need more tweets to find out. :wink:

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