Is the grass greener on the opposite side? We’re unsure, however the sky is definitely bluer. It’s been almost two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter, now X, prompting people to arrange shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (which has since gone out of business) and Spill have been floated as potential successors, but few of them apart from Meta’s Threads have achieved the expansion rates that Bluesky has achieved.

After almost a 12 months of existence as an invitation-only service, Bluesky opened to everyone in February 2024 and gained almost 800,000 latest users in in the future. As of October 2024, Bluesky has over 10 million users thanks to an influx of users following the X ban in Brazil and one other influx of users following the updated X rules, which helped the app rise to the highest 5 hottest apps within the US App Store. While the numbers are promising, the network has a number of catching up to do to compete Threads’ 175 million users a 12 months after its launch.

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a decentralized social networking application developed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and developed in parallel with Twitter. The social network has a Twitter-like user interface with a collection of algorithms, federated design, and community-specific moderation.

Bluesky uses a built-in open source framework, AT protocolmeaning those outside the corporate have transparency into the way it is built and what is being developed.

Dorsey introduced Project Bluesky in 2019, when he was still CEO of Twitter. He said on the time that Twitter would fund “a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers and designers” to construct a decentralized standard for social media, with the initial goal of Twitter adopting it itself. standard. . But that was before Elon Musk bought the platform, so Bluesky is completely separate from Twitter.

As of May 2024, Dorsey not serves on Bluesky’s board of directors. Bluesky is now an independent public profit corporation led by CEO Jay Graber.

How to use Bluesky?

Once registered, users can create a handle, which is able to then be represented as @username.bsky.social, in addition to a display name, which can be more visible in daring text. If you’re so inclined, you can replace the domain name you have already got along with your username – for instance, on Bluesky I’m often called @amanda.omg.lol.

The app itself works similarly to regular Twitter, where you can click the plus button to create a 256-character post that also can include photos. The posts themselves might be replied to, retweeted, liked, and might be reported via the three-dot menu, shared via the iOS share sheet with other apps, or copied as text.

You can search and follow other people, then view their updates in your “Home” timeline. Previously, Bluesky shared popular posts within the “What’s Hot” feed. This feed has since been replaced by an algorithmic and personalized ‘Discover’ feed, with greater than just popular content.

For latest users, Bluesky has introduced a “Starter Pack” feature that creates a curated list of individuals and custom channels that you can follow to immediately find interesting content.

User profiles include the identical features you’d expect: profile photo, background, bio, details, and the number of individuals they follow. Profile feeds are divided into two sections like Twitter: posts and posts and replies.

There’s also a “Discover” tab at the underside of the app’s navigation, which offers more suggestions for “who to follow” and a live feed of recently released Bluesky updates.

Who’s on Bluesky?

In early July 2023, when Instagram Threads launched, Bluesky downloads on iOS and Android exceeded a million. Prominent figures corresponding to Neil Gaiman, Drill AND Chelsea Manning they emigrated to Bluesky. It is also home to news organizations corresponding to Bloomberg, Washington Post. AND Engadget. As of August 2024, Bluesky now also allows heads of state to register and join the platform for the primary time.

Does Bluesky work the identical as X?

In some ways, yes. Until recently, Bluesky did not have DMs like X, but this has since been implemented. However, chats on Bluesky are currently limited to individual messages relatively than group messages. Bluesky also said it is inquisitive about implementing something similar to X’s Community Notes feature. Additionally, X doesn’t use a decentralized protocol like ActivityPub or ON.

In October 2024, Elon Musk announced that the X blocking feature will work in a different way than before. The latest blocking feature allows blocked users to view your posts and profile, but doesn’t allow them to interact along with your posts. Some users consider this update poses a security risk, leading to a rise in Bluesky sign-ups because the blocking feature is more traditional.

While Bluesky initially began as a project convened by Jack Dorsey in 2019 when he was Twitter’s CEO, the social media app has been an independent company since its inception in 2021.

Is Bluesky free?

Yes, and it is now open to the general public.

How does Bluesky generate profits?

Bluesky’s goal is to find one other way to maintain its network beyond promoting and paid services in order that it may possibly remain free for end users. On July 5, 2023, Bluesky announced additional seed round funding and a paid service that gives custom domains to end-users who wish to have a singular domain as a handle on the service. Bluesky also stressed that it doesn’t want to “require the sale of user data for advertising purposes” to monetize your platform.

Is Bluesky decentralized?

Yes. The Bluesky team develops the decentralized AT protocol on which Bluesky is built. In the beta phase, users can only join the bsky.social network, but Bluesky plans to create a federation, which suggests infinite, individually managed communities could exist on the open source network. So, if a non-Bluesky developer creates their very own latest social app using the AT protocol, Bluesky users will find a way to switch to the brand new app and transfer it to their existing followers, support, and data.

“You will always have the freedom to choose (and exit), rather than being swayed by the whims of private companies or black box algorithms. Wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too.” explained within the Bluesky blog post.

Is Bluesky secure?

In October 2023, Bluesky email verification added as part of a bigger effort to improve account security and online authentication. The addition of this service is a very important step forward in making Bluesky more competitive with larger networks like X which have more robust security controls. In December 2023, Bluesky gave users the chance to opt out of this alteration share your posts on a public network after users’ response.

Can Bluesky be customized?

Yes. In May 2023, Bluesky released custom algorithms that it calls “custom feeds.” Custom feeds allow users to subscribe to many various algorithms that present various kinds of posts that the user might want to see. You can pin custom channels, which is able to appear at the highest of your timeline as different tabs to pick from. Channels that you pin or save are positioned within the “My Channels” menu within the sidebar of the app.

In March 2024, the corporate announced “AT Protocol Subsidies”, a brand new program that can award small grants to developers to support development and customization. One recipient, SkyFeed, is a custom tool that enables anyone to construct their very own feeds using a graphical user interface.

Is Bluesky available on iOS and Android?

Yes. Bluesky rolled forward Android users on April 20 and was initially made available to iOS users in late February. Users can access Bluesky on the Internet Here.

How does Bluesky take care of disinformation?

Following the October 2023 update, the app will now warn users about misleading links by flagging them. If the links shared in users’ posts don’t match their text, the app will display a “possibly misleading” warning to the user that the link could also be taking them to a site they don’t desire to go to.

Has Bluesky had any controversy?

Since its initial launch, Bluesky has struggled with moderation issues. The app is accused of failing to protect marginalized users and moderating racist content. Next controversy over an app that allowed racial slurs in account names, frustrated users initiated a “posting warning” that resulted in them refusing to engage with the platform until it introduced barriers to flagging slurs and other offensive terms in usernames.

What moderation features does Bluesky have?

In a December 2023 post from the Bluesky Safety account, a big batch was announced moderation updates.

Bluesky is rolling out “more advanced, automated tools” designed to flag content that violates its Community Guidelines, which is able to then be reviewed by the app’s moderation team.

Bluesky has launched moderation features similar to those in X, including user lists and moderation lists, the latter of which might be used to mute or block multiple users without delay. The app is also working on a feature that enables users to limit who can reply to posts.

Some Bluesky users proceed to favor the flexibility to make their accounts private – a feature they needed more of after Bluesky announced it could launch the service public network interface.

In March 2024 the corporate introduced Ozon to the marketa tool that enables users to create and run their very own, independent moderation services that they make available to users “unprecedented control” on their experiences on social media.

What is the difference between Bluesky and Mastodon?

Although Bluesky’s architecture is similar to Mastodon, many users have found Bluesky to be more intuitive, whereas Mastodon can seem inaccessible: selecting which instance to join looks as if an unimaginable task on Mastodon, and long-time users are very defensive about adhering to established publishing norms. which may make joining the conversation intimidating. To stay competitive, Mastodon recently simplified the registration process by making mastodon.social the default server for brand new users.

However, launch federation will make it work more like Mastodon, as users will find a way to select which servers they need to join and transfer their accounts as they need.

Who owns Bluesky?

Although Jack Dorsey was the founding father of Bluesky, he is not involved in the corporate’s ongoing development and not serves on the corporate’s board of directors. Bluesky’s CEO is Jay Graber, who previously worked as a software engineer for the cryptocurrency Zcash after which founded an event planning site called Happening.

The world of WordPress, some of the popular technologies for creating and hosting web sites, is experiencing very heated controversy. At the guts of the difficulty is a battle between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts web sites built on WordPress.

WordPress technology is open source and free software, powering an enormous portion of the Internet – about 40% of internet sites. Websites can host their very own WordPress instances or use an answer provider similar to Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution.

In mid-September, Mullenweg wrote blog entry calling WP Engine the “cancer of WordPress.” He criticized the host for disabling users’ ability to view and track the version history of every entry. Mullenweg believes this feature is “at the heart of the user promise to protect data” and stated that WP Engine turns it off by default to lower your expenses.

He also called WP Engine investor Silver Lake and said it was not contributing enough to the open source project and that WP Engine’s use of the “WP” brand had misled customers into believing it was a part of WordPress.

Legal battle

In response, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic, asking them to withdraw their comments. It also found that use of the WordPress trademark falls under fair use.

The company claimed that Mullenweg said it might take a “scorched earth nuclear approach” against WP Engine unless it agreed to pay “a significant portion of its revenues to license the WordPress trademark.”

In response Automattic sent its own stop and desist letter to WP Engine claiming that it did violated the foundations for using WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.

WordPress Foundation too modified the trademark policy page and called out WP Engine, claiming that the hosting service confused users.

“The abbreviation “WP” shouldn’t be trademarked by WordPress, but please don’t use it in a confusing manner. For example, many individuals think that WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially related to WordPress, which shouldn’t be true. They have never even donated to the WordPress Foundation, though they make billions on WordPress,” the updated page reads.

The ban on the WP engine and the fight for a trademark

Mullenweg then banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources. While items like plugins and themes are open source, providers like WP Engine must run a service to download them, which shouldn’t be open source.

This broke many web sites and made them inoperable updating plugins AND topics. It also exposed a few of them to security attacks. The community didn’t like this approach of leaving small web sites without help.

In response to the incident, WP Engine wrote in a post that Mullenweg had abused his control over WordPress to disrupt WP Engine customers’ access to WordPress.org.

“Matt Mullenweg’s unprecedented and unjustified action disrupts the normal operation of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not only WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open source users who rely on WP Engine tools such as ACF,” WP Engine said .

On September 27, WordPress.org temporarily lifted the banallowing WP Engine access to resources until October 1st.

Mullenweg wrote a blog post a proof that the fight is just with WP Engine over trademarks. He said Automattic had been attempting to broker a trademark licensing deal for a very long time, but WP Engine’s only response was to “pull us along.”

On September 30, the day before WordPress.org’s deadline to ban WP Engine, the hosting company updated its site’s footer to make clear that it shouldn’t be directly affiliated with the WordPress Foundation nor does it own the WordPress industry.

“WP Engine is a proud member and supporter of the WordPress® user community. The WordPress® trademark is the intellectual property of the WordPress Foundation and the Woo® and WooCommerce® trademarks are the intellectual property of WooCommerce, Inc. The names WordPress®, Woo® and WooCommerce® on this website are for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsement by the WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc. WP Engine is not endorsed by, owned by, or affiliated with WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc.” read the updated description on the web site.

The company also modified the names of its plans from “Essential WordPress,” “Core WordPress,” and “Enterprise WordPress” to “Essential,” “Core,” and “Enterprise.”

WP Engine said in an announcement that it modified these terms to challenge Automattic’s claims.

“Like the rest of the WordPress community, we use the WordPress logo to describe our business. Automattic’s suggestion that WPE needs a license to do this is simply wrong and reflects a misunderstanding of trademark law. To address the concerns she raised, we have eliminated several examples that Automattic provided in its September 23 letter,” an organization spokesperson told TechCrunch.

On October 1, the corporate posted on X that it had successfully implemented its own plugin and theme update solution.

On October 15, TechCrunch reported that Automattic had been planning to define trademarks with “nice notes and notes nice” lawyers since earlier this yr, in accordance with an internal blog post written by the corporate’s then-chief legal officer. The post also mentioned a technique for filing more trademarks, which the inspiration finally did so in July.

The WordPress community and other projects imagine this might occur to them too and wish a proof from Automattic, which holds the exclusive license to the WordPress trademark. The community can be asking for clear guidelines on how they will and can’t use “WordPress.”

The WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also registered as a trademark “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers AND suppliers they fear that if granted, these trademarks could also be used against them.

Developers have expressed concerns over-reliance on industrial open source WordPress products, especially when access to them can quickly disappear.

The founding father of the open source content management system, John O’Nolan, also spoke out on the matter and criticized the single-person control of WordPress.

“The network needs more independent organizations and greater diversity. 40% of the network and 80% of the CMS market mustn’t be controlled by one person,” he said post X.

On October 9, the creator of the Ruby on Rails web development platform, David Heinemeier Hansson, expressed the opinion that Automattic was violating open source software principles by asking WP Engine to pay 8% of its revenue.

“Automattic is totally out of touch and the potential harm to the open source world goes far beyond WordPress. Don’t let the drama and its characters turn you away from this threat,” he said blog post.

On the identical day, Mullenweg added a brand new checkbox to the WordPress.org contributor login, asking people to confirm that they usually are not affiliated with WP Engine in any way. This move was met with criticism from the writer community. Some authors said yes forbidden Slack community for opposing this motion.

In response, WP Engine stated that its clients, agencies, users and the community at large usually are not associates of the corporate.

On October 12, WordPress.org took control of the ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) plugin — which makes it easier for WordPress developers so as to add custom fields on the edit screen — powered by WP Engine. Because WP Engine lost control of the open source plugin repository, the Silver Lake-backed company was unable to update the plugin. WordPress.org and Mullenweg said plugin guidelines allow the organization to take this step.

WP Engine i lawsuit

On October 3, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg for abuse of power in a California court. The hosting company also alleged that Automattic and Mullenweg did not keep guarantees to run open-source WordPress projects with none restrictions and didn’t give developers the liberty to construct, run, modify and redistribute the software.

“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the past ten days has revealed serious conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if unchecked, threaten to destroy this trust. “WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect its employees, agency partners, customers and the broader WordPress community,” the corporate said in an announcement to TechCrunch.

The lawsuit also notes alleged text messages from Mullenweg regarding the potential employment of WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner. In a comment for Hacker News, Mullenweg he said that Brunner desired to develop into the chief director of WordPress.org.

In response, Automattic called the case baseless.

“I stayed up last night reading the WP Engine complaint, trying to find any value in it. The entire case is without merit and we look forward to hearing their lawsuit in federal court,” the corporate’s legal representative, Neal Katyal, said in an announcement. blog post.

On October 18, WP Engine filed a lawsuit in a California court, asking a judge to revive its access to WordPress.org. A day later, the corporate submitted its application administrative request asking the court to shorten the deadline for considering an earlier preliminary injunction.

Automatic exodus

On October 3, 159 Automattic employees who disagreed with Mullenweg’s direction for the corporate and WordPress as a complete took severance pay and left the corporate. Nearly 80% of those that left worked in Automattic’s Ecosystem/WordPress division.

On October 8, WordPress announced that Mary Hubbard, who was TikTok US’s chief executive and experience officer, would begin as executive director. This position was previously held by Joseph Haden Chomphosawho was considered one of 159 people leaving Automattic. The day before, considered one of engineers from WP Engine announced that they’re joining Automattic.

On October 12, Mullenweg wrote in a post that all the things was working An Automattic worker would receive 200 A12 shares as a token of gratitude. These shares are there special class for Automattic employees, which may be sold after a yr and has no expiration date.

On October 17, Mullenweg posted one other customization offer on Automattic Slack – with only a four-hour response window – with a nine-month severance package. However, if any person took up the offer, they’d also lose access to the WordPress.org community, Mullenweg said.

AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at a valuation of $8 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal..

If the deal goes through on these terms, Perplexity’s valuation might be greater than double what it was at its $3 billion valuation obtained from SoftBank over the summer. According to WSJ, the corporate currently receives about 15 million inquiries a day and generates about $50 million in annual revenue.

Perplexity uses artificial intelligence to help people search the Internet using a chatbot-style interface. Some news publishers have accused the corporate of unauthorized web crawling and plagiarism, and The New York Times even sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter, but CEO Aravind Srinivas said he wants to work with publishers and has “no interest in being anyone’s business here.” antagonist.”

Fundraising talks began after OpenAI announced it had raised a $6.6 billion round at a $157 billion valuation. While products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have blurred the road between chatbot and search engine, the corporate is moving more directly into search with SearchGPT.

Perplexity didn’t immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.