A lot of changes are happening in the world of social media: TikTok is preparing to close, Mark Zuckerberg is loosening content restrictions for Meta apps, and Elon Musk continues to play with the X algorithm to suit his personal preferences.
Luckily, despite the fickle nature of most app users, Bluesky seems to have managed to break through and become a truly promising alternative. And thanks to the fundamental nature of its open protocol, anyone can build their own apps that utilize the Bluesky social graph.
For example, a developer by the name of Sebastian Vogelsang is creating an app that will essentially be a new version of Instagram based on the Bluesky AT protocol. Because it uses the Bluesky social graph, posts added to Flashes will also appear in the main Bluesky client, and vice versa – photos posted to Bluesky will appear in Flashes. The app simply filters text posts and shows only those that contain photos or videos. Through the app, users can share a slideshow of up to four photos or a video of up to one minute in length.
Vogelsang says that Flashes does not aim to be a complete copy of Instagram and will not get many of the features that Instagram has. This makes sense because the app is just a redesigned version of the Bluesky app. Many people have complained that they miss the days when Instagram was simple, not filled with AI-generated content and weird recommendations. Flashes can potentially help fill this gap.
Bluesky received a significant boost after Elon Musk’s acquisition of X and then Twitter, although its growth has slowed in recent months. Bluesky is estimated to have approximately 27 million active users. This doesn’t even come close to comparing to apps like Instagram and TikTok, and it’s also much smaller than X. Reaching critical mass for any social network is incredibly difficult, and X’s influence is only growing as Musk begins to serve as President-elect Trump’s right-hand man.
But Bluesky has a promising future if it can continue to grow at a moderate pace. In October, the company raised a $15 million investment round and plans to launch a paid subscription service to become independent of advertising and user data collection. Most major social networks today have closed their APIs and do not allow third-party clients, as they make it difficult to display and target ads, and the data itself is used to train artificial intelligence.
Vogelsang told TechCrunch that Flashes should be launched in the coming weeks. Anyone interested in checking it out can follow updates on the Flashes page on Bluesky.
