Extra excellent news for these seeking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a extra open various: An impartial developer is constructing a photo-sharing app for Bluesky referred to as Flashes. The soon-to-launch app is powered by the identical expertise that underpins Bluesky, the AT Protocol, and has been constructed utilizing code from the developer’s earlier Bluesky shopper, Skeets.
When launched, Flashes might faucet into rising shopper demand for options to Huge Tech’s social media monopoly. This development has led to the adoption of open supply, decentralized apps like Mastodon and Bluesky, amongst others, together with the not too long ago launched Pixelfed cellular apps, constructed on Mastodon’s ActivityPub protocol. It’s additionally, partly, what’s fueling TikTok customers’ shift to the Chinese language app RedNote forward of the U.S. TikTok ban — that’s, U.S. customers are signaling that they’d moderately use a international adversary’s app than return to Meta at this level.
Flashes itself relies on Berlin developer Sebastian Vogelsang’s earlier app, Skeets, his preliminary foray into creating consumer-facing apps for the rising social community, Bluesky, which now tops 27.5 million customers.
Whereas Bluesky provides its personal official cellular shopper, Skeets differentiated itself by specializing in the wants of iPad customers in addition to custom-made accessibility options for blind and low-vision customers, as that’s one among Vogelsang’s areas of experience.
Late final yr, Vogelsang additionally realized there was potential to construct apps utilizing this identical codebase that might cater to Bluesky customers extra keen on visible content material, like pictures and movies. As a result of Bluesky already helps this kind of media, it was solely a matter of reconfiguring the Skeets app so its design and consumer interface would look extra just like different photo-sharing apps, like Meta’s Instagram.
“I believed concerning the concept of getting one base social graph after which having simply completely different apps decide from that graph no matter they wish to show,” Vogelsang instructed TechCrunch. “I discovered it very intriguing, as a result of earlier than we had these separated networks.”
He says Flashes might assist pull in new potential Bluesky customers who’ve but to hitch the social community as a result of they by no means noticed themselves as a “Twitter individual.”
“This may occasionally give them an entry level into the community, into the entire protocol,” Vogelsang stated.
Nonetheless, the developer stresses that Flashes just isn’t meant to be an Instagram clone, nor will it provide all the identical options.
At launch, Flashes will assist picture posts of as much as 4 photos and movies of as much as 1 minute in size, similar to Bluesky. Customers who put up to Flashes will even have their posts seem on Bluesky and feedback on these posts will even feed again into the app as if it had been simply one other Bluesky shopper. It is going to additionally assist Bluesky’s direct messages.
To make this work, Flashes merely filters Bluesky’s present timeline for posts with pictures and video posts. (Sooner or later, Vogelsang additionally plans so as to add metadata to Flashes’ posts so Bluesky customers would have a option to preserve their feeds on Bluesky’s foremost app from being flooded with picture posts if that grew to become an issue.)
Flashes didn’t take too lengthy to construct as a result of it was capable of reuse Skeets’ present code. The app will even have the ability to market to Skeets’ present consumer base, who’ve now downloaded the app some 30,500 occasions so far.
Vogelsang says he’s now working to combine subscription-based options from each his apps so customers don’t must pay twice for the premium options, like Skeets’ bookmarks, drafts, muting, wealthy push notifications, and others particular to Flashes. (Each apps are free to make use of and not using a subscription, we must always word.)
Later, Vogelsang says he desires to launch a video-only app, too, referred to as Blue Display.
The developer expects to have the ability to launch Flashes to the general public in a matter of weeks with a TestFlight beta arriving forward of that. customers can comply with Flashes’ account on Bluesky for additional updates.
