Good News: Twitter Announces An Excellent Lead For The Bluesky Decentralized Social Media Protocol Project
from the this-is-good dept
It has been nearly two years since Jack Dorsey announced plans to explore switching Twitter from its current setup as a centralized platform controlled by one company to a distributed protocol project that anyone can build on -- called Bluesky. This was especially exciting to me, since some of Jack's thoughts were inspired by my "Protocols, not Platforms" paper. There hasn't been that much news on Bluesky since then -- leading many to insist that the project was going nowhere. However, there have been plenty of things happening behind the scenes -- at least somewhat complicated by the whole pandemic thing. In January of this year, an "Ecosystem Review" document was published.
At the time, I saw some people mocking it as a pointless whitepaper, rather than anything concrete, but to me it was actually a really important step. When Dorsey first announced Bluesky, many people complained that he was trying to reinvent the wheel, when there were a lot of already ongoing projects trying to create distributed and decentralized protocols for social media. Understanding the actual ecosystem, what works, what is limited, what can still be done, and how to build something that will be (1) effective, (2) compelling, and (3) will last, takes some actual thought and consideration.
Since then, Twitter went through a process of interviewing a number of possible leads for the project -- and, as a disclaimer, I will note that Twitter invited me to take part in interviewing each of their finalists, and submitting my feedback and thoughts on them. The candidates all had strong ideas and attributes for leading the project, but to me, one stood out way beyond the others: Jay Graber, who has now been named to lead the project. For what it's worth, Jay was the author of that original ecosystem paper.
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be leading @bluesky, an initiative started by @Twitter to decentralize social media. Follow updates on Twitter and at https://t.co/Sg4MxK1zwl
— Jay Graber (@arcalinea) August 16, 2021
This is an exciting announcement, as I felt that Jay's vision for the project was not just the most complete and thorough of anyone else's, but also the most compelling. Seeing her vision got me more excited about the possibility to actually move forward to a world of protocols over platforms than I had been in a while. There are, of course, many, many challenges to making this a reality. And there remains a high likelihood of failure. But one of the key opportunities for making a protocol future a reality -- short of some sort of major catastrophe -- is for a large enough player in the space to embrace the concept and bring millions of users with them. Twitter can do that. And Jay is exactly the right person to both present the vision and to lead the team to make it a reality.
I know that Bluesky is now actively looking to expand the team and hire a few developers. If you have the skills necessary, please check it out. This really is an amazing opportunity to shape the future and move us towards a more open web, rather than one controlled by a few dominant companies.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: competition, decentralized, distributed, jay graber, platforms, protocols, social media, web3
Companies: bluesky, twitter
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Remember when Twitter built their company on having a community out there providing third party app support and suddenly pulled the plug on that, blocking major features to try and force users to use their ad laden mess of ever changing features and unwelcome suggestions?
I do, so I fully expect any 'open' twitter ecosystem to have a shed load of caveats and suffer the same fate.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
It's called USENET and it's been around since 1980.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
FTFY.
Before submitting this, I gave my added words some thought. Government actors, USA or otherwise, are not necessarily stupid about tech or the internet. They might be personally so for whatevrer reason, but they have staffers, nearly all of whom are young and quite capable of understanding, and using, both tech and the internet. The problem really boils down to the BGA (bad government actor) abusing his/her power for personal gain over the good of the country (and/or the internet itself). Which is why we have the word "grandstanding" in our lexicon. Sad, that.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Remember when Twitter built their company on having a community out there providing third party app support and suddenly pulled the plug on that, blocking major features to try and force users to use their ad laden mess of ever changing features and unwelcome suggestions?
Yes. Yes, I do. Which is why Bluesky is being set up as an independent organization. It's being seeded by Twitter, but is designed to stand on its own.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Oh, so a cryptocurrency fan who wants to help make a Social Credit Score that uses NFTs and the blockchain.
I’m super excited for BlueSky to force me to use cryptoshit when I don’t want to, or else I get a lower Social Credit Score.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
An independent organization with a project lead that has a huge stake in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency succeeding and a blockchain/NFT project that she would likely love to integrate into BlueSky sounds like a recipe for a system forcing people to have a crypto wallet of some kind even if they don't want to. I'm excited for the Chinese Social Credit Score, but on the blockchain.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I've seen her plans for Bluesky, and you're wrong. She is a cryptocurrency fan for uses where it makes sense and not for situations where it does not. The fact that she has worked on other projects does not mean she will automatically wrap them into Bluesky.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
When Jack Dorsey, who has been bullish on Bitcoin and recently said Bitcoin "Will Unite a Deeply Divided Country and eventually the world", and then signs on someone whose work is so deeply entwined with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, I don't expect BlueSky to skimp on implementing it wherever it can.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
One hopes it happens before they /dev/null all of my data.
My hopes are not high.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Yes, which is why so many people abandoned it after it became an unusable spammy mess after the general public got online. Unless that's been fixed in the meantime without my knowledge, having a new project that builds on and learns from the lessons of the past is a good thing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
XMPP or blockchain
I fussed with Jabbr way back. Blockchain is above my skill. Good luck Bluesky.
[ link to this | view in thread ]