On 1st March, Twitter users worldwide experienced an outage, with many unable to view tweets or access various feeds. The outage coincided with the beta testing launch of Bluesky, a decentralized social network project spearheaded by Jack Dorsey, the Twitter founder. While Twitter users were left frustrated and unable to access the platform, Bluesky grabbed the online community’s attention.
According to reports, the outage began at 9 am UTC and lasted five hours, affecting mobile app and website users. The reason of the outage is yet to be confirmed by Twitter, but many users reported that they could not view their “For You” and “Following” feeds.
Amid the outage, it was reported that Twitter had retrenched 200+ employees around the weekend, reducing its staff numbers to under 2,000. Since Elon Musk handled this platform, Twitter has seen a significant reduction in its workforce, with product managers, engineers, and data scientists among those who have been let go.
While Twitter struggled with its current outage and staff reductions, Dorsey’s Bluesky project was launched into beta testing. The mobile app became accessible to certain users via invitation-only beta testing, with reports suggesting it had over 2,000 downloads by the February month end.
Bluesky was created in 2019 as a side product of Twitter to create an open and decentralized standard for social media. The platform has been in development for some time, and initial reports suggest that it has the potential to be a game-changer in the social media landscape.
One of the standout features of Bluesky is its potential for cryptocurrency functionality, with reports suggesting that Twitter has been developing payment options.
Bluesky is not the only decentralized online media platform launched recently, with Damus going live in February this year. The messaging platform utilizes Nostr, which is a decentralized network.
As Twitter continues to grapple with staff reductions and technical issues, the launch of Bluesky has been met with interest and excitement. With the potential to revolutionize the social media landscape and incorporate cryptocurrency functionality, Bluesky could be something beyond imagination. Only time will tell whether it will live up to the hype, but for now, it has certainly captured the online community’s attention.
