Just as Elon Musk was completing his purchase of Twitter, the firm’s founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, launched a beta for a new social-media startup.
Dorsey’s blockchain-based Bluesky Social announced last Tuesday that it will launch shortly and is now accepting beta testers. According to corporate spokespeople, the original announcement received 30,000 sign-ups in two days. Users may still sign up to join the app and become beta testers before the platform is made public.
According to Gizmodo, one of Bluesky’s primary selling points is that their technology, dubbed “AT Protocol,” would allow customers power over their algorithms.
Dorsey stated in 2019 that Twitter was sponsoring research to create “an open and decentralized standard for social media.”
Dorsey said in private text messages to Musk that became public during the months-long legal saga between Musk and Twitter, “A new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. That’s why I left.” He went on to say Twitter should have a “open-sourced protocol” similar to the encrypted-messaging app Signal, and that Twitter “can’t have an advertising model.”
Dorsey cofounded Twitter in 2006 and served as CEO for several years, most notably from 2015 until November 2021, when he stepped down. He was succeeded by Parag Agrawal, the company’s then-chief technology officer. Musk sacked Agrawal, as well as Ned Segal, the chief financial officer, Vijaya Gadde, the legal head, and Sean Edgett, the general counsel, shortly after taking over Twitter this week.
According to The Information, Musk sacked them “for cause” in order to avoid having to pay severance benefits and unvested stock awards.